Supposing the Native American worldview is ‘more true’ while the
Western European worldview is ‘more easy’
or, ‘Two radically different architectures for ‘story’ that ‘uses us’
"... unmoved ... from time without end ... you rest ... in the midst
of the paths ... in the midst of the winds ... you rest ... covered
with the droppings of birds ... grass growing from your feet ... your
head decked with the down of birds ... you rest ... in the midst of
the winds ... you wait ... Aged one." --- Lakota tribute
Our western society is a scientifically-minded society that, as
Johannes Kepler observed in 1619, tends to “choose not that which is
most true but that which is most easy”.
In the Native worldview, there is no split between the ‘inanimate
world’ and the ‘animate world’, the world is understood, instead, as a
(fluid-) dynamical continuum, a worldview that resonates so strongly
with relativity and quantum theory that physicists like F. David Peat
(co-author with David Bohm) have written books like ‘Blackfoot
Physics’ to describe and underscore the deep parallels.
Why do we need to split apart the ‘living part’ of the universe from
the ‘dead part’? And does it make sense to believe that a dead
universe became ‘infected with life’; i.e. that ‘life’ is an adjective
that applies to some things (‘life-forms’) rather than, as Erwin
Schroedinger (formulator of quantum wave dynamics) suggests, an
inherent property of nature.
As modern physics implies, nature is a dynamically unifying (space-
time) continuum, a self-renewing continuum characterized by continuing
‘gathering’ and ‘re-gathering’. We may say that a human body ‘de-
composes’ when ‘it dies’ but nature wastes nothing (nature includes
all things and excluded no thing) and the material and energies that
‘stayed together’ (in the manner of a convection cell or hurricanes in
the continuing flow of our natural living space), are fully ‘re-
gathered’ in the ongoing dynamics of nature.
An important ‘clue’ as to how we give meaning to dynamical processes
in nature associates with our tendency to conceive of ‘re-gathering’
as ‘scattering’ (decomposition rather than ‘re-composing’). That
is, by conceiving of the ongoing ‘re-organisation’ in nature as
‘disorganisation’, we split nature into two parts; (a) a world of
chaos and disorganisation that is nevertheless a breeding ground for
‘organisational structures and organisms’, and (b) organised
structures and organisms which emerge from and feed on the world of
chaos and disorganisation. In other words, we split the world into
‘signal’ and ‘noise’ and conceive of these two realms as ‘mutually
exclusive’.
This, OUR splitting of nature into ‘disorganisation/noise’ and
‘organisation/signal’ is conceptualisation which, while we impose it
on our mental models, is not imposed on nature.
The highly organised dynamical form we call ‘hurricane’ is not first
‘born’ into a transcendent realm (the realm of ‘organisation’) then
proceeds to ‘graze’ on the pasture of relative ‘disorganisation’ that
it ‘emerged from’; i.e. the ‘hurricane’ never quits being a ‘feature’
of its dynamical mother-space. The fact that we name and define it
as a ‘local system’ is a matter of our ‘choosing not that which is
most true, but that which is most easy’.
How does it come about (in our minds, at least) that the ‘hurricane’
or ‘convection cell’ that is inherently included in the fluid-
dynamical continuum of nature, acquires ‘local being’ as a ‘local,
independently-existing object/system/organism with its own local
behaviour’? This conceptualisation has been described by many
philosophers, as being the synthetic product of language or ‘language
games’ (Poincaré, Wittgenstein etc.). As John Stuart Mill observed,
the notion of ‘local being’ derives from our linguistic defining and
name-labelling of forms; “Every definition implies an axiom; that in
which we affirm the existence of the object defined.”
If we can synthetically impart this transcendent ‘local being’ to a
‘hurricane’, otherwise understood as a convection cell within nature’s
fluid-dynamical continuum (see ‘A Fluid-Dynamical Worldview’ at
www.goodshare.org/fluiddynamicview.pdf ) then we can impart ‘local
being’ to any dynamical form (e.g. the ‘organism’) that boils up in
the fluid-dynamical continuum of nature, as a dynamical feature, and
persists for some time in the swirling gathering and re-gathering of
nature’s fluid-dynamics, that is reflected back in the organisational
patterns of galaxies (Milky Way) and organisms (Ammonites) alike.
There is nothing in nature that exists as a ‘local, independent
system’ with their own ‘local behaviours’, as attested to by
relativity and quantum wave dynamics; i.e. our conceptualizing of the
natural world we share inclusion in, in terms of self-standing ‘local
objects/systems/organisms’ with their own ‘local behaviours’, as
requires us to impose an absolute rigid and empty [Euclidian]
reference space geometry to give meaning to the absolute motion that
is constituted by the ‘local behaviour’ of ‘local objects/organisms/
systems, is the artefact of our language game-playing and our
penchant for ‘choosing not that which is most true but that which is
most easy.’
Once we have persuaded ourselves to ‘swallow’ this notion that
organisation emerges out of the disorganised soup that is nature’s
base-level stuff and in the process ‘transcends it’ so that it takes
on the status of ‘signal’ relative to ‘noise’ (mutually exclusive
realms, as in ‘meaningful’ and ‘without meaning’) and is naturally
empowered to graze upon the fluid-dynamical pasture from whence it was
born. This sort of ‘Oedipal’ archetype, where the child-as-dynamical-
feature of the mother-space feeds on (exploits) itself (the dynamical
space of nature in which it is an included feature) is a twisted
conceptualisation that is easily recognized in what we refer to as
man’s abuse of his environment (i.e. his abuse of the common living
space he is included in).
Problems in the ‘foundational basement’ of our language games are
likely to get amplified in our higher level (upper story) use of
language games, as in our ‘story-telling’. That is, if we split both
nature and the cognitive realm into two mutually exclusive realms;
‘signal’ (that which is full of meaning) and ‘noise’ (that which is
devoid of meaning) and at the same time ‘organisation’ (local systems,
organisms, governments, businesses) and ‘disorganisation’ (the
swirling flow that is devoid of organisation), then we shall inherit
the problem noted by Newton that our understanding by means of
generalising what is already going on (what has already ‘gathered’
into place) fails to address how things ‘came together’ (the
continuing gathering and re-gathering based (fluid-)dynamics of
nature);
"... but though these bodies may, indeed, persevere in their orbits by
the mere laws of gravity, yet they could by no means have at first
derived the regular position of the orbits themselves from those
laws.” --- Newton
In the evolutionary dynamics of nature (and/or of man), there is a
problem in that our standard methods for ‘giving meaning’ to what is
going on, are no longer applicable when we are in the course of
‘revolution’, when our old story by which we make sense of things is
crumbling and some new story, that is not quite yet ‘in place’, is
beginning to install itself.
For example, after the British Empire had been ‘in place’ for a few
generations, we (as the British) have a ‘story’ that gives meaning to
what is going on, and that also furnishes a role-play for ourselves,
not that we have unlimited flexibility to pick and choose it (not
everyone can be emperor). We allow ‘our stories’ (the one’s we
accept, voluntarily or otherwise) to constrain our behaviour and to
keep us in orbit like the planets around the sun, or the serfs around
the landlords or whatever. This is part of our ‘language game’
approach to meaning/understanding that in turn shapes our behaviour.
But, our stories can not only be constraining and ‘use us’ (force us
into role-plays), but our stories can also be ‘limiting’ and a
‘limited story’ is like a cancer since it tends to ‘imperialistically’
proliferate its own role-plays without listening to the collection of
cells in which it is included. British (and European) colonialism
was an imperialistic limited and limiting story of the ‘cancerous’
sort that sought to proliferate itself.
Within the human collective ( the ‘brotherhood of man’?), an
imperialistic control-seeking ‘limited story’ can ‘use us’ to the
point of ‘abusing some of us’. Cecil Rhodes, a name associated with
Oxford scholarship, articulated one aspect of this limited story that
illustrates how ‘story’ can both use and abuse us;
'The native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise. We
must adopt a system of despotism in our relations with the barbarians
of Southern Africa... I personally prefer land to niggers.”
Nelson Mandela had a ‘bigger story’ in mind; one that did not ‘limit’
itself by the notion of racial supremacy, but instead celebrated the
diversity of the brotherhood of man. This ‘enlargement’ of the story
allows the older more limited story to die without the result being
‘emptiness’ accompanied by depression. That is, it provides enlarged
context within which the ‘old story’ still figures, but now only as a
feature within a broader
...
Condensed version capturing essentials of the above post, posted with
the aim to improve the traction for comments, critiques, dialogue;
‘Story’ is the way we pull a diverse collection of experiences into
connect confluence. Once we have ‘formulated’ the story, it ‘takes
over’ from the particular ‘facts’, ‘experiences’ or ‘data points’ that
were used to formulate it and it now ‘corrects’ our experience, facts,
data points; i.e. new facts are forced to fit the ‘story’ that has
been developed, ... hence, ... ‘story uses us’ (and ‘story abuses
us’).
This applies not just to the formulations (stories that bring the data
into connective confluence) in ‘science’ but also to the formulations
of religion and politics, or ‘mixtures’ thereof. For example, ‘man-
made global warming’ is one way of bringing a multiplicity of facts
into connective confluence, and this story seeks to ‘correct our
experience and behaviour’; i.e. the story ‘uses us’.
The ‘american dream’ is a story that ‘uses us’ (if we let it) in that
it tells us that our personal destiny can be commanded by courage and
perseverance on our part (as individual persons, collectives/groups
and/or nations). There is no mention, in this story, as to how the
quality of a community dynamic or global dynamic is impacted when a
multiplicity of individuals and groups with diverse ‘dreams’ let
themselves be used by this story whilst sharing inclusion in a common
living space dynamic.
So, the first ‘point’ is that ‘story uses us’; i.e. our experience
(and therefore our behaviour) is ‘corrected’ by the story. A simple
example is that of the imaginary line boundaries of ‘sovereign
nations’. Once the story of a ‘local, independent nation’ is
formulated, the story uses those that believe in it; i.e. it corrects
our experience and behaviour (we dutifully defend the story and throw
our bodies and behaviour in to back it up). [Of course, such stories
can clash, such as the story of Serbia and the story of Kosovo].
The example of a ‘sovereign nation’ is NOT being chosen to make a
‘political point’. It is being chosen because of how it is
paralleling the evolution of the ‘systems sciences’. in the 1950, a
small group of scientists, philosophers, anthropologists etc. with
‘humanist’ orientation got together to develop understanding of the
origin and nature of the obvious ‘shortfalls’ in scientific inquiry.
What they found was that standard ‘analytical inquiry’ assumed the
‘sovereignty’ of the system being inquired into; i.e. analytical
inquiry implicitly assumes the local independent existence of the
‘system’ so that an understanding of the behaviour of the system will
be delivered by inquiry into its internal components, structures,
processes, relationships. Such inquiry, they concluded, falls short
because every system is included in a ‘suprasystem’ that gives greater
context not only to the behaviour of the system but also to its
emergence. Such inquiry has been termed ‘synthetical inquiry’ by
Ackoff and the point is made that analytical inquiry into a system
MUST FIRST be contextually grounded in synthetical inquiry into the
suprasystem in which the system is included; i.e. if one wishes to
understand the behaviour of a university, one must first inquire into
the behaviour of the community the university is included in and
understanding how the system dynamic is serving the dynamic of the
suprasystem it is included in. if the university-system has a
problem, an understanding of the problem may not be forthcoming from
analytical inquiry into the university-system. That is, if the
‘health’ of a vacuum-tube factory begins to ail, ... analytical
inquiry into the dynamical internals of the vacuum-tube-factory-system
may not deliver the needed understanding. The understanding will come
from the synthetical inquiry into the relationship between the system
and its suprasystem; e.g. the suprasystem dynamic which induced the
emergence of the vacuum-tube-factory-system is now inducing the
emergence of transistor-factory-systems.
What is ‘going on here’ concerns the manner in which we impose
‘identity’ on systems. One must ask oneself, does the ‘identity’ of
a system derive from ‘the system itself’, or does the identity of the
system derive from ‘its relationship with the suprasystem it is
included in?’
In other words, can we understand ‘what a vacuum-tube-factory-
system’ [or university-system, or organism-system] ‘is’ by way of
analytical inquiry into its local structure, internal components,
processes etc.
This is the same question, in different words, posed by Newton when he
observed that his laws of motion/gravity could only describe already
established and persisting behaviours (of the planets etc.) and were
innately inadequate for delivering understanding on how these dynamics
came to be established and to persist.
The systems scientists concluded that, in order to understand the
university-system, one had to understand the inductive pull (into
emergence and persisting behaviour) coming from the suprasystem in
which the system is included; i.e. analytical inquiry into the system
itself ‘will not do’. In other words, ‘what the system is’ (the
‘identity’ of the system) is given meaning from the outside in, by the
dynamic of the suprasystem it is included in. Sure, we can explain
how a vacuum tube works and how it is made, in as much detail as you
would like, ... but there would be no vacuum-tube-factory SYSTEMS
without a suprasystem dynamic inductively pulling it into existence
and persisting (productive) behaviour.
It was not ‘vacuum tubes’ that the suprasystem dynamic was pulling
into being, it was something else that could not be explicitly
identified, only implicitly understood, in the manner of a ‘niche’ or
a ‘dynamical hole-that-sucks things into being and shapes their
behaviour on a continuing basis.’.
Conclusion I - There is Fundamental Inadequacy of Analytical
Inquiry in delivering systems understanding.
“There are no systems that can be MEANINGFULLY identified on the basis
of their own local material structure and processes. Meaningful
identification/understanding of systems must start with an
understanding of the dynamics of the suprasystem the dynamical system
is included in.”
This ‘identity’ conclusion (the fundamental applies to all systems,
which means it applies to ‘organisms’ and to ‘humans’ and to
‘organisations’ and to ‘hurricanes’ and to ‘nations’.
Corollary: The form of the indistinctness of the ‘inductive niche’ in
the suprasystem dynamic that pulls the system into
‘being’ [‘becoming’ is more accurate here since the suprasystem of
nature is characterized by a continuing creative unfolding] and
'shapes its behaviour' corresponds to that of the ‘convection cell’ in
the continuing gathering and re-gathering of fluid flow.
The ‘vacuum-tube-factory-system’ is a gathering of resources
(materials, labour etc.) into a particular ‘standing-wave’ dynamical
form [like the crowd dynamic at an intersection where the components
are in continuing motion through the dynamic] and the ‘transistor-
factory-system’ is a ‘re-gathering’ that draws on some of the same
resources along with some new ones from elsewhere, so that ‘gathering’
and ‘re-gathering’ as in fluid-dynamical transformation is a more
realistic description of this evolution than ‘the birth of a new
system’ (as if out of no-where) and ‘the death of an old system’.
This ‘birth’ and ‘death’ apply only to the pattern of dynamics
associated with the movement of resources; i.e. the primary process is
the continuing suprasystem dynamic with its inductive gathering and
regathering of material resources.
The suprasystem dynamic, ultimately ‘nature’ (nonlocal fluid-dynamical
continuum), is ‘the mother of all systems’ and the identity of the
system is something we impose on what has already gathered into a
dynamical pattern within the suprasystem dynamic.
The ‘system’ (or ‘organism’ etc.) as we explicitly define it
ANALYTICALLY, out of the context of the suprasystem dynamic that pulls
it into being and inductively shapes its form and behaviour, is
nothing other than ‘the ghostly skeleton of the departed suprasystem
dynamic’. The vacuum-tube-factory-system, as analytically described,
is one such ‘ghostly skeleton’.
While analytical inquiry, which understands a ‘system’ as a ‘locally
existing object/organism’ would put a ‘ghost-in-the-system’ to explain
its behaviour when we conceive of its behaviour as ‘local’ (the
hurricane exists, is at coordinates such-and-such, and is moving
northward), the true source of animation of the purportedly ‘local’
object is the suprasystem dynamic in which it is included. In the
case of the ‘individual human system’ this ‘ghost-in-the-system’ is
suggested to be the ‘brain’ acting as a ‘central supreme authority’
over all ‘internal affairs’ and thus in control of ‘its behaviour’
once we start ignoring the true source of its form and behaviour, the
dynamic of the suprasystem in which it is included.
In fact, we put ‘two ghosts in the system’ to make the system self-
standing as in analytical inquiry, the ‘gene’ to explain its form in
‘local terms’ and the ‘brain’ to explain its behaviour in ‘local’
terms. (these two 'ghosts' are also based on analytical inquiry into
the notionally 'local' system so they have the same sort of limited/
abstract meaning as the 'vacuum-tube-factory-system'; i.e. they are
out of the context of the
...
Full of references and allusions I approve of Ted, don't know where to start in adding anything to it ...
Your phrase "choose not that which is most true but that which is most easy".
Is a statement of the the "memetic" problem the way I see it. Ideas proliferate because they are easy to understand, rationalize and communicate, not because they are inherently valuable (or true). So the problem shifts to the cultural perception of what is considered "rational" - the closer some idea / story / argument is to that idea of rationality - the "easier" it is for ideas to spread and achieve acceptance.
I think part of our quest here may be to use that "weakness" of the pervading (logical) rationality to spread the word of (poetical) inclusionality. If we put "pure" inclusional poetry in front of a wide audience we shouldn't expect them to "get it" even if we all do. We need a plan - multiple metaphors related to existing rationality - to transport them there. Just a thought.
> Condensed version capturing essentials of the above post, posted with > the aim to improve the traction for comments, critiques, dialogue;
> 'Story' is the way we pull a diverse collection of experiences into > connect confluence. Once we have 'formulated' the story, it 'takes > over' from the particular 'facts', 'experiences' or 'data points' that > were used to formulate it and it now 'corrects' our experience, facts, > data points; i.e. new facts are forced to fit the 'story' that has > been developed, ... hence, ... 'story uses us' (and 'story abuses > us').
> This applies not just to the formulations (stories that bring the data > into connective confluence) in 'science' but also to the formulations > of religion and politics, or 'mixtures' thereof. For example, 'man- > made global warming' is one way of bringing a multiplicity of facts > into connective confluence, and this story seeks to 'correct our > experience and behaviour'; i.e. the story 'uses us'.
> The 'american dream' is a story that 'uses us' (if we let it) in that > it tells us that our personal destiny can be commanded by courage and > perseverance on our part (as individual persons, collectives/groups > and/or nations). There is no mention, in this story, as to how the > quality of a community dynamic or global dynamic is impacted when a > multiplicity of individuals and groups with diverse 'dreams' let > themselves be used by this story whilst sharing inclusion in a common > living space dynamic.
> So, the first 'point' is that 'story uses us'; i.e. our experience > (and therefore our behaviour) is 'corrected' by the story. A simple > example is that of the imaginary line boundaries of 'sovereign > nations'. Once the story of a 'local, independent nation' is > formulated, the story uses those that believe in it; i.e. it corrects > our experience and behaviour (we dutifully defend the story and throw > our bodies and behaviour in to back it up). [Of course, such stories > can clash, such as the story of Serbia and the story of Kosovo].
> The example of a 'sovereign nation' is NOT being chosen to make a > 'political point'. It is being chosen because of how it is > paralleling the evolution of the 'systems sciences'. in the 1950, a > small group of scientists, philosophers, anthropologists etc. with > 'humanist' orientation got together to develop understanding of the > origin and nature of the obvious 'shortfalls' in scientific inquiry. > What they found was that standard 'analytical inquiry' assumed the > 'sovereignty' of the system being inquired into; i.e. analytical > inquiry implicitly assumes the local independent existence of the > 'system' so that an understanding of the behaviour of the system will > be delivered by inquiry into its internal components, structures, > processes, relationships. Such inquiry, they concluded, falls short > because every system is included in a 'suprasystem' that gives greater > context not only to the behaviour of the system but also to its > emergence. Such inquiry has been termed 'synthetical inquiry' by > Ackoff and the point is made that analytical inquiry into a system > MUST FIRST be contextually grounded in synthetical inquiry into the > suprasystem in which the system is included; i.e. if one wishes to > understand the behaviour of a university, one must first inquire into > the behaviour of the community the university is included in and > understanding how the system dynamic is serving the dynamic of the > suprasystem it is included in. if the university-system has a > problem, an understanding of the problem may not be forthcoming from > analytical inquiry into the university-system. That is, if the > 'health' of a vacuum-tube factory begins to ail, ... analytical > inquiry into the dynamical internals of the vacuum-tube-factory-system > may not deliver the needed understanding. The understanding will come > from the synthetical inquiry into the relationship between the system > and its suprasystem; e.g. the suprasystem dynamic which induced the > emergence of the vacuum-tube-factory-system is now inducing the > emergence of transistor-factory-systems.
> What is 'going on here' concerns the manner in which we impose > 'identity' on systems. One must ask oneself, does the 'identity' of > a system derive from 'the system itself', or does the identity of the > system derive from 'its relationship with the suprasystem it is > included in?'
> In other words, can we understand 'what a vacuum-tube-factory- > system' [or university-system, or organism-system] 'is' by way of > analytical inquiry into its local structure, internal components, > processes etc.
> This is the same question, in different words, posed by Newton when he > observed that his laws of motion/gravity could only describe already > established and persisting behaviours (of the planets etc.) and were > innately inadequate for delivering understanding on how these dynamics > came to be established and to persist.
> The systems scientists concluded that, in order to understand the > university-system, one had to understand the inductive pull (into > emergence and persisting behaviour) coming from the suprasystem in > which the system is included; i.e. analytical inquiry into the system > itself 'will not do'. In other words, 'what the system is' (the > 'identity' of the system) is given meaning from the outside in, by the > dynamic of the suprasystem it is included in. Sure, we can explain > how a vacuum tube works and how it is made, in as much detail as you > would like, ... but there would be no vacuum-tube-factory SYSTEMS > without a suprasystem dynamic inductively pulling it into existence > and persisting (productive) behaviour.
> It was not 'vacuum tubes' that the suprasystem dynamic was pulling > into being, it was something else that could not be explicitly > identified, only implicitly understood, in the manner of a 'niche' or > a 'dynamical hole-that-sucks things into being and shapes their > behaviour on a continuing basis.'.
> Conclusion I - There is Fundamental Inadequacy of Analytical > Inquiry in delivering systems understanding.
> "There are no systems that can be MEANINGFULLY identified on the basis > of their own local material structure and processes. Meaningful > identification/understanding of systems must start with an > understanding of the dynamics of the suprasystem the dynamical system > is included in."
> This 'identity' conclusion (the fundamental applies to all systems, > which means it applies to 'organisms' and to 'humans' and to > 'organisations' and to 'hurricanes' and to 'nations'.
> Corollary: The form of the indistinctness of the 'inductive niche' in > the suprasystem dynamic that pulls the system into > 'being' ['becoming' is more accurate here since the suprasystem of > nature is characterized by a continuing creative unfolding] and > 'shapes its behaviour' corresponds to that of the 'convection cell' in > the continuing gathering and re-gathering of fluid flow.
> The 'vacuum-tube-factory-system' is a gathering of resources > (materials, labour etc.) into a particular 'standing-wave' dynamical > form [like the crowd dynamic at an intersection where the components > are in continuing motion through the dynamic] and the 'transistor- > factory-system' is a 're-gathering' that draws on some of the same > resources along with some new ones from elsewhere, so that 'gathering' > and 're-gathering' as in fluid-dynamical transformation is a more > realistic description of this evolution than 'the birth of a new > system' (as if out of no-where) and 'the death of an old system'. > This 'birth' and 'death' apply only to the pattern of dynamics > associated with the movement of resources; i.e. the primary process is > the continuing suprasystem dynamic with its inductive gathering and > regathering of material resources.
> The suprasystem dynamic, ultimately 'nature' (nonlocal fluid-dynamical > continuum), is 'the mother of all systems' and the identity of the > system is something we impose on what has already gathered into a > dynamical pattern within the suprasystem dynamic.
> The 'system' (or 'organism' etc.) as we explicitly define it > ANALYTICALLY, out of the context of the suprasystem dynamic that pulls > it into being and inductively shapes its form and behaviour, is > nothing other than 'the ghostly skeleton of the departed suprasystem > dynamic'. The vacuum-tube-factory-system, as analytically described, > is one such 'ghostly skeleton'.
> While analytical inquiry, which understands a 'system' as a 'locally > existing object/organism' would put a 'ghost-in-the-system' to explain > its behaviour when we conceive of its behaviour as 'local' (the > hurricane exists, is at coordinates such-and-such, and is moving > northward), the true source of animation of the purportedly 'local' > object is the
i agree with what you are saying here in regard to rational stories
proliferating because of their 'easiness' or 'simplicity'', which
suggests that 'inclusionality', however well articulated (it requires
poetic metaphor for expression) is unlikely to proliferate/propagate
as freely and easily since 'what is most true' is generally not 'that
which is most easy' to present and comprehend.
ok, now for your next point about using the weaknesses in the rational
modeling, multiple exemplaires which jointly expose the weakness, as a
means of transporting the mind, or 'open the rational mind up' to the
shortfalls in objective rationality and the greater truths in
'inclusionality'.
in principle, i agree with you, but i can't help but note how the
common social dynamics that associate with 'our search for truths'
gets in the way of doing this. so i am just posing the open question
as to how we may deal with 'this'.
the 'this' (this social dynamic associated with the search for truth'
is what i will now try to describe.
consider the nature of the (objective rational) proposition; 'fred
killed brian'.
it is 'inter-object' or 'transactional' or 'determinstic' or 'causal';
i.e. it concerns 'what things do' or 'local objects and their
interactions'.
it is common in the truth-seeking of our western social dynamic, to
formulate propositions of this object-transaction type (i.e. leaving
space out of it).
'inclusionality' cannot be employed in such a spaceless approach; i.e.
in a fluid-dynamical world, what we are calling 'local objects' are
instead 'convection cells' which manifest as dynamical forms in the
nonlocal fluid-dynamical continuum; i.e. we, as convection cells
(convection cell complexes that correspond to, but deepen the meaning-
implications of, material structural complexes) condition the dynamics
of the flow at the same time as the dynamics of flow condition our
dynamics.
so, the habit of truth-seekers in our western culture is to build a
multiplicity of space-ignoring propositions of the local object
transaction type.
our debating tradition is exactly this, and our discussions on 'what
is the truth' almost inevitably regress to (degenerate to) such space-
ignoring propositions.
we first articulate a proposition such as 'fred killed brian' and
then bring evidence to in order to prove it, after which we declare
'quod erat demonstrandum' (that which was to have been demonstrated
[has been demonstrated]); i.e. the 'proof is complete'.
as philosophers of science such as poincare have brought out, but
which is typically of little interest to the 'easy-truth seeking' of
western public, all that has been demonstrated is the truth of the
hypothesis, but there is nothing in this to assure the legitimate
mapping of the hypothesis back into the real world of our experience;
i.e. there is nothing to assure the natural legitimacy of our
proposition. it is just a proposition, as wittgenstein notes.
all such propositions, that deal only in local object transactions in
a time-sequential, causal, local deterministic way, are a case of
"choosing not that which is most true but that which is most easy".
the way in which it is more easy is by simplifying the notion of
'cause' by assuming that the present state of the world (e.g. 'brian
is dead') depends only on the immediate past (e.g. 'something or
someone has killed brian'). this is clearly an opting for choosing
easy over true in the following manner;
"First, with respect to time [the first ‘approximation of convenience’
of mainstream mathematical physics]. Instead of embracing in its
entirety the progressive development of a phenomenon, we simply try to
connect each moment with the one immediately preceding. We admit that
the present state of the world only depends on the immediate past,
without being directly influenced, so to speak, by the recollection of
a more distant past. Thanks to this postulate, instead of studying
directly the whole succession of phenomena, we may confine ourselves
to writing down its differential equation ; for the laws of Kepler, we
substitute the laws of Newton." --- Henri Poincare, 'Science and
Hypothesis'
in our informal debates, where rational propositions are accepted as
'the carriers of truths', we hear people energetically insisting, 'am
i right?' or am i 'not right'? (is it not true that fred killed
brian?).
their energy in asking others to concede on the truth of their
propositions suggests that they believe that such truths are
'absolute', that they are truths that are 'incontrovertible' ('not
open to question', 'proof positive', 'irrefutable', 'demonstrable').
but, as already mentioned, all we can prove are our 'hypotheses' and
this does not 'take care of' the mapping between the hypotheses and
the 'real world', so the non-refutability of the proof does not
guarantee the legitimacy, in nature, of the proposition that is proved
true.
today, we hear that 'there is no longer any doubt that man is causing
global warming'. the problem is that it is in the minds of men that
such propositions are formulated and proven and nature is in no way
bound by such propositions. this is where the incompleteness lies,
and so why get all excited about establishing the truth of a
proposition?
'fred killed brian' is a hypothesis that can be proven true. let's
say that it is proven true and that judgements and punishments follow
based on this truth.
then it emerges that 'brian, killed by fred hatfield, is the
thirteenth mccoy killed by a hatfield over the course of a century'.
let's say that this too is proven true.
nature is inherently cyclical yet we represent it, in the spaceless
terms of local object transactions, as linear, as is implied by our
assumption that 'the present state of the world depends only on the
immediate past'.
even in the dynamics of race cars on an oval track, the space of the
track becomes a repository of accruing influences so that a driver who
brakes suddenly so that it causes others behind him to brake may
himself have to brake as the slow-down pulse recedes away behind him
and wraps around to confront him so that he and everyone else sharing
inclusion in the space on the track are induced to modify their
behaviours by their historical behaviour. the mediative medium here
is the 'space' they share inclusion in which serves as a dynamical
respository wherein those included in it condition the dynamics in it
(the spatial medium) at the same time as the dynamics of space are
conditioning their dynamics.
the proposition 'fred crashed into brian', while it may be 'proven',
is not a competent proposition for delivering understanding here since
it is reduced to transactions between local objects as in in empty not
influencing space while (what is 'most easy') while 'what is most
true' is that the 'space' the drivers and their vehicles 'share
inclusion in' MEDIATES their dynamics and serves as a repository that
is continually being conditioned by accruing the dynamical behaviours
of what is included in the space whose behaviours are at the same time
being conditioned by the dynamics of the space they share inclusion
in.
ok, that completes 'part one' of this response to your comment, tries
to make the point that proving propositions based on local object
transactions 'true' is a 'truth' that is very limited in the
understanding it delivers, and thus it is not a truth that we can base
our real-world behaviour on and expect not to get into trouble (to
find that there is a gap between our actual and intended results of
behaviour based on such limited truth/understanding) and to find
ourselves sustaining incoherence between what we intend by our actions
and what 'results'.
'part two' of this response, deals with 'what is missing'.
all of this, of course, takes us into the architecture of our attempts
to seek the truth and to seek to understand the world dynamic and our
relation to/within it, ... architectural inquiry that is not at all
popular since most people feel they are in charge of very capable
tools of understanding and truth-seeking already, and because they
feel this way, they will use these tools (e.g. objective rationality)
to assess value in such architectural inquiry, and if they do (if they
use objective rationality) they will not only not find value there,
but will find negative value there since the apparent value in proving
the truth of local object transaction propositions will be eroded (the
solid rock of such truth will become the wriggling back of an
alligator adrift in the current).
who wants one's truth-seeking tools to be exposed as 'superficial'?
some seeking deeper truths may, but not those who have taken great
comfort in the solid grounding that these tools have given them, for
understanding the world 'around them' and for understanding 'who they
themselves are' in terms of space-ignoring local object based
transactions (their transactional accomplishments etc.).
consider the common propositions of the zero sum win/lose game variety
that are accepted as 'true';
'she gives him sex in a tit-for-tat exchange wherein he gives her
money'. love is in this constrained view is 'satisying one another's
needs'
to many, this sort of 'transaction' is inherent in the dynamics of
'nature'
"Chantilly lace and a pretty face
And a pony tail hanging down
That wiggle in the walk and giggle in the talk
Makes the world go round
There ain't nothing in the world like a big eyed girl
That makes me act so funny, make me spend my money"
this is a space-ignoring local object transaction view; i.e. it is the
'darwinian' view wherein the environment is composed of local objects
that can be either resources to be exploited or obstacles to be
vanquished.