Moreover, defining the difference in this way is far more precise than the appeal to the discrete and the continuous, which are more like heuristics, to the extent that the one can simply scale into the other at a level of granularity fine enough. — StreetlightX
(and even then, the original sense of the terms have less to do with data than they do information). — StreetlightX
This has been pointed out to you before: if there's some base level of granularity in your analog, then you're dealing with something that's fundamentally atomic. Therefore, at that fundamental level, there is negation. That lack of negation that was spoken is only true of a continuum. — Mongrel
The same information can be transmitted either analog-wise or digitally... so I don't know what you're talking about there. — Mongrel
Oh good, here's someone with some technical knowledge. Can you explain what a "square" wave is, or is that just a metaphor in itself? — Metaphysician Undercover
? This is what I've been saying from the beginning. Not sure what's being pointed out anywhere. — StreetlightX
I'm referring to the distinction between information and data which is a basic one in computer science. — StreetlightX
In that case, the thesis would be that nature is fundamentally digital. — Mongrel
I'm asking you to elaborate. — StreetlightX
Think about the notion that the digital is a subset of the analog.... as if the analog is made up of discrete points and the digital is just some of them. — Mongrel
So the measure of psi - as a measure - is not intrinsic to the analog gradient that is a pressure gradient. While I appreciate that the two measures of psi at different points of a pressure gradient may stand in a relation of contrariety rather than contradiction, not even contrariety is, strictly speaking, an analog value. Hence Deleuze: "It is difference in intensity, not contrariety in quality, which constitutes the being 'of' the sensible. Qualitative contrariety is only the reflection of the intense, a reflection which betrays it by explicating it in extensive. It is intensity or difference in intensity which constitutes the peculiar limit of sensibility" (Difference and Repeition). — Streetlight
This is deep water, because I'm not sure how much of a gap there is between reason and the conception of reason. — Hoo
It's connected to the issue of the world-for-us versus the world-in-itself. But the world-in-itself or the world-not-for-us looks necessarily like an empty negation. It marks the expectation that we will update the world-for-us (which includes the model of the filtering mind enclosed in non-mind that it must manage indirectly, conceptually, fictionally.) Is there a place for reason in this "real" non-mind enclosure? — Hoo
I'd say that we only embrace the destabilization of an investment/prejudice in order to prevent the destabilization of a greater investment/prejudice. — Hoo
Kind of... in electronics, we think of ideal square waves, knowing that in the real world, instantaneous changes of that kind don't happen. — Mongrel
Streetlight. I have to be brief for lack of time, so here's a simple question to cut-to-the-chase: what precisely is our model of the "intensive"? How are we supposed to understand it? — Aaron R
I see what you're saying, I think, but that image in my mind/reason of minds/reasons external to my reason is still an image within my own mind or reason. "Not-my-mind" is like an empty negation in a strict logical sense, it seems to me. There's my-reason-for-itself which I model in my mind among other reasons-for-others. But all of this is unified in my concept system. All of this modelling of modelling gets very tangled. I do like the idea of looking at activities.Consider that reasoning is something which you do, and it is also something which others do. Therefore it is something which goes on inside your mind, and also something which goes on in other places of the world, external to your mind. If we produce a conception of reason, we are describing all these external instances of reasoning, and making a concept of what it means to reason. Since we cannot see into the minds of all these thinking human beings, we look at their activities, compare the activities with how "I" would be thinking at the time of making that activity, and come up with a conception of reason. — Metaphysician Undercover
We generally agree here, I think. But it seems the world-in-itself remains an empty negation. We have an complex, conceptual image of mind-independent reality, but this "mind-independent reality" is constructed exactly from our own concepts. Another way to think of the "Real" (mind independent) is as that which resists mere thinking or redescription. It's in the way of our desire. It's otherness is derived from its opposition to our projected future. This is largely just us learning to parse the lingo of other perhaps. I believe there is a world out and that there are other minds out there. And yet this is a belief and therefore within my own "larger mind" in which I model my mind among minds, etc. And then we have an infinite nesting of this structure. Tangled.So we can turn this world-for-us versus world-in-itself relationship upside down, invert it. The world-in-itself has intensive properties. Other than understanding those intensive properties as things which are described by laws, we can only have direct access to those intensive properties through our internal selves, and reason is necessarily there. Therefore the attempt to conceive of a world-in-itself as a world without reason is an exercise in futility. The world has intensive properties which must be accounted for in our conception. Our only means for producing a proper conception of the intensive properties of the world is through ourselves, because this is where we have direct access to intensive properties, and here we necessarily find reason. — Metaphysician Undercover
It is an issue of dropping one seemingly small investment, which has become evidently a wrong judgement. That small wrong judgement though, may support other larger, more important investments. So the question becomes one of should I maintain this small wrong judgement, which I know is wrong, and seems very insignificant, but it supports other significant, and more important things, or should I drop it, and destabilize those important investments. — Metaphysician Undercover
As I see it, there is only of the pressure of prejudices upon prejudices, so the mistaken judgement is already therefore in conflict with one set of prejudices even as it supports another set. Thinking synthesizing new prejudices, through inference and metaphorical leaps, and prunes them as well, if it doesn't abandon them altogether. There are also shifts in intensity. We strive toward flow. We don't want to lock up like one of Asimov's robots tangled in its own directives. Even here, as I see it, we are working on this system as an extremely self-conscious level, in this system's image of itself as system, etc. (And the yet the notion of this system is just a prejudice we project upon the Real that resists, it seems).The point is all in the way that we relate significance to insignificance. The judgement which has come to the mind as being a mistake, or wrong judgement, is now judged as being small, slight, or insignificant, in order to justify maintaining it, in spite of now knowing that it was a wrong judgement. It is deemed "insignificant", so that dropping it is seen as unimportant. But the motivation not to drop it, and therefore maintain it, despite it being now understood as wrong, which produces that designation of "insignificant", is the fact that it will destabilize more important investments. This fact indicates that it really is significant, not insignificant, and the designation of "insignificant" is just another wrong judgement, carried out to support the original wrong judgement.. — Metaphysician Undercover
So which is it - do vague and crisp map on to analog and digital or do they not? If they do, in what sense can you claim that the analog/digital distinction is derivative from vagueness (circularity). If they don't, you're back to mythology. — StreetlightX
Broadly speaking, one can speak of two types of systems in nature: analog and digital. — StreetlightX
A few quite important things follow from this, but I want to focus on one: it is clear that if the above is the case, the very notion of identity is a digital notion which is parasitic on the introduction of negation into an analog continuum. To the degree that analog systems do not admit negation, it follows that nothing in an analog system has an identity as such. Although analog systems are composed of differences, these differences are not yet differences between identities; they are simply differences of the 'more or less', or relative degrees, rather than 'either/or' differences. — StreetlightX
I explained the alternative, it involves first, the recognition that our measurement techniques are inadequate for measuring some aspects of the world, in particular, the aspects associated with the assumed continuum. So we need to go back to a method of focusing on description rather than measuring. — Metaphysician Undercover
In the act of describing, the digital method (rules of logic) is applied to the tool of description, language. In the act of measuring, we tend to believe that the digital method is applied directly to the thing being measured, but this is an illusion. In reality, the limitations of the digital method have been incorporated into the language of measurement. The result is that any observations that are measurements, are necessarily theory-laden, due to the restrictions which are inherent within the measurement system. That is the position to which science has progressed today. — Metaphysician Undercover
Logic is itself a branch of maths in its highest state of development you realise? — apokrisis
So first you are not talking about a different method of reasoning and measurement, just advocating for a less crisply developed level of reasoning and measurement. — apokrisis
Again, I beg to differ. I am not calling for a more primitive mode of reasoning, I am calling for a less narrow minded form of observation.So your call to a more verbal and "picture in the head" level of metaphysical exploration is not actually an alternative method, just a return to a more primitive mode of scientific reasoning. — apokrisis
That is the point, precisely. It is truly an alternative method, because science has now progressed to the point where all credible (objective), observations must be measurements. But if you consider, as I suggested, that there are qualities within the world that we haven't got the capacity to measure as quantities, then to understand those qualities, we need to proceed with observations which are not measurements. As we've learned from the past, it is only after we've developed an adequate understanding of different qualities, through observation, that we devise the appropriate mathematics required to measure them.Now there is no harm in doing some of that too. That is the way we would expect to start to develop some actually fresh insight which - if it works out - could be properly mathematised. — apokrisis
I would instead say that maths is a branch of logic. It's a specialized form of logic, and that's what makes it so precise. But the same thing which makes it so precise, its speciality, also limits its scope, or range of applicability. — Metaphysician Undercover
So if you carry out a scientific method of empirical observation which deals only with measurements, quantities, then the qualities which cannot be measured are neglected. — Metaphysician Undercover
Again, I beg to differ. I am not calling for a more primitive mode of reasoning, I am calling for a less narrow minded form of observation. — Metaphysician Undercover
But if you consider, as I suggested, that there are qualities within the world that we haven't got the capacity to measure as quantities, then to understand those qualities, we need to proceed with observations which are not measurements. — Metaphysician Undercover
The only problem for your view seems to be that whatever philosophical implications we might think are inherent in the maths cased science cannot themselves be expressed in mathematical language. — John
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.