If you can make a distinction between discrete elements in a system, then you're dealing with a digital system. If you can't, you're dealing with an analog system. This isn't to say that one can't talk about differences in analog systems, only that with analog systems, you're dealing with differences or ordinality (position, order, magnitude) rather than cardinality (number of). — StreetlightX
Part of my argument here is that what you refer to as material identity is a kind of hypostatization or transcendental illusion in which 'numerical' (formal) identity is projected (mistakenly) onto nature. I write of course, from the perspective of a kind of philosophy of process where any attempt to think in terms of brute identities ought to be rendered suspect from the beginning. With respect to formal logic, one can see how something as simple as the subject-predicate relation [P(x)] is fraught with metaphysical issues. — StreetlightX
Digital systems are what happens when a continuum distinguishes an element of itself from itself. — StreetlightX
The objectionable idea of the thing-in-itself is present in both of those ontologies ... I don't see how an ontology of pure (merely "analogue") processes can account for the possibility of empirical knowledge about anything — Pierre-Normand
If the distinction that matters here is cardinal versus ordinal, one would wonder how you can't have heard of ordinal numbers. — The Great Whatever
So the idea that the analog is a kind of noumenal 'in itself' is wrong. — StreetlightX
As I said above, the analog is not at all anything like a 'thing-in-itself'. It is eminently knowable in the most trivial of ways; it's just that unlike 'digital knowledge' which is denotative and representational, analog knowledge deals with relationships. — StreetlightX
Broadly speaking, one can speak of two types of systems in nature: analog and digital — StreetlightX
It seems to me that the analog/digital distinction is not so much about the binary Yes/No nature of digital things, but rather about discrete vs continuous mathematics. Discrete mathematics is about cases where there is a finite or at least countable set of possible states, whereas continuous mathematics - of which calculus is the best-known example - is where there is an uncountable set of states, with a metric over that set to denote distance between states (eg the distance between 2.71 and 3.141 is 0.431). — andrewk
A way to summarise all of the above is this: to the degree that nature is a continuum, there are no brute identities in nature. Or less provocatively, to the degree that there are identities in nature, they are constructed and derivative of analogic differences. — StreetlightX
It seems that you're real beef here is not with identity and categorization per se, but with the uncritical or dogmatic application of categories (especially those that imply socio-politoc-economic identities) upon individuals in nature. — Aaron R
That said, I still feel hesitant to deny that there is a legitimate distinction to be made between those identities that essentially depend upon contextual relations to "ens rationis" (e.g. the human lebenswelt) and those that essentially depend solely upon contextual-relations to "ens reale". Again, this seems to come part-and-parcel with the notion that some binary distinctions are naturally sustained (e.g. consider the evolution of "switches" in biological nature, and their fundamental role in processes of homeostasis, reproduction, sensation, etc.). The upshot is that I'm not entirely convinced of the notion that identity is merely transcendental in the sense of being confined merely to "ens rationis", while perhaps acknowledging that it is transcendental in the sense of being essentially context-dependent (I believe that medieval scholars actually referred to the fundamental sensitivity of finite, substantial being to environmental context "transcendental relativity").
Right - on my analog watch 3:30 (which is not really 3:30, because there are no identities) is not "not 3:31" - thus spoke the metaphysician."It is impossible to represent the truth functions of symbolic logic in an analog computer, because the analog computer cannot say 'not-A' — StreetlightX
I don't see what's to be gained from cordoning off what is a transcedental addition versus what is really in nature 'in itself,' and there seems to be no interest in the project if you're not a Kantian (the question of 'is identity in the mind/language/computer, or in the thing itself?' is only of interest to someone with Kantian assumptions)
So you think degrees on a temperature scale are ordinal then? — StreetlightX
Yeah, exactly. I said elsewhere in the thread that got this train of thought going that what I'm kind of after is something like a "critique of pure formal logic" as it were. — StreetlightX
I agree with this actually, although I would even refine it somewhat. I would in fact say that the emergence of the digital goes hand in hand with neither ens rationis nor ens reale but with ens vitae: that is, life. — StreetlightX
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