Suppose you introduce a boundary by separating one piece of a continuum from another. By hypothesis, we are now at least treating the continuum as digital, which means the border must be somewhere. — The Great Whatever
Yes, I guess that is the big question. But even if the real turned out to be (that is if we could know without question that it definitely was) discrete, is it reasonable to think that discreteness could consist in absolutely precise boundaries between the fundamental units? That would seem to evoke Leibniz' Monadology. — John
Perhaps all three have their different places and functions if the 'grand scheme'? I''m guessing though, that you see the other two as being subsumed and augmented by pragmatic metaphysics? — John
We cannot assume a proper A and not-A relation between the analog and the digital — Metaphysician Undercover
I do not claim that we need to start in certainty, this is more like what you imply. You imply that if a thing is different from A you can establish the logical certainty of not-A of that thing... — Metaphysician Undercover
So this is the mistake, these two, discrete and continuous, are not properly opposed and therefore are not mutually exclusive, as you imply. We have discrete colours, red, yellow, green, blue, within a continuous spectrum — Metaphysician Undercover
There is a relation of exclusion involved here, but (as others have alluded to) it's the exclusion of contrariety rather than contradiction. So for example, red and green are contraries whereas red and not-red are contradictories. The former is associated with "material" negation, the latter with "formal" negation. Interestingly, formal negation can be defined in terms of material negation: not-red is the just the set of all of red's contraries, etc.
Similarly, the sense in which the magnitude at point A is not the magnitude at point B (within the context of a gradient) also appears to be that of material negation. Having a psi of 40 at point A is materially incompatible with simultaneously having a psi of 50 at point A, and in that sense the former excludes the latter (and vice versa). Crucially, the magnitude at A is not the magnitude at B quite regardless of the activities or even the existence of ens vitae. — Aaron R
Certainly there can be analog and digital measurements, but ultimately what exists at the present is what I believe apokrisis calls "crispness" - the vague becomes the discrete, or the digital. Digital corresponds to certainty, analog to uncertainty or vagueness. — darthbarracuda
Furthermore, analog systems inherently have digital parts anyway, they just aren't computational. Additionally, the way I understand it, analog systems are not so much a separate kind of thing than they are a less discrete digitalization.
I think it's worth noting that the continuum, just as much as digital logic, exists only by virtue of thought. Thought enables the coming-to-be of parts, and that coming-to-be consists in the self-distinguishing of the part from the whole, as much as it does the self-distinguishing of the whole from the part. — John
As I commented on elsewhere in reply to Pierre, the analog is not some kind of unknowable 'thing-in-itself' which is simply 'vague'; the analog has qualities which are knowable, but simply in a different mode than that of the digital. — StreetlightX
Bateson himself speaks of how analog communication works.... — StreetlightX
At it's base, this is what 'aesthetic' means: relating to space and time, as with Kant's 'transcendental aesthetic'. — StreetlightX
Aesthetics (/ɛsˈθɛtɪks/; also spelled æsthetics and esthetics also known in Greek as Αισθητική, or "Aisthētiké") is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of art, beauty, and taste, with the creation and appreciation of beauty.[1][2] It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgements of sentiment and taste.[3] More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature."
Gilles Deleuze is the philosopher who has perhaps attended to the specificity of analog differences with the most care, referring to them as differences of 'intensity' as opposed to digital differences of 'extensity', noting how the former necessarily underlie the latter: — StreetlightX
This field is intensive, which is to say it implies a distribution in depth of differences in intensity ... — StreetlightX
So again, to turn back to our eternal debate, any metaphysics based on modeling relations - itself premised on discrete, digital knowledge - is derivative of a more primal aesthetic ground out of which it is born. — StreetlightX
Having a psi of 40 at point A is materially incompatible with simultaneously having a psi of 50 at point A, and in that sense the former excludes the latter (and vice versa). Crucially, the magnitude at A is not the magnitude at B quite regardless of the activities or even the existence of ens vitae. — Aaron R
Difference or intensity (difference of intensity) is the sufficient reason of all phenomena, the condition of that which appears." (Difference and Repetition). — StreetlightX
So the assumption that there is an underlying analog difference, as "sufficient reason", must be justified. We cannot just say "it must be so or else the world is an illusion", the reason why the world is not an illusion, must be itself be made intelligible."Every diversity [read: identity - SX] and every change refers to a[n analog] difference which is its sufficient reason. — StreetlightX
You can head towards the two poles of "the discrete" and the "continuous", but you could never go past them - as how can the discrete be more discrete than the discrete? And you never really leave either behind either as the only way to know you are headed towards discreteness is because it is measurable - plainly visible - that you are headed away still from continuity. And vice versa. — apokrisis
But as I said, I don't think you are working with a well defined dichotomy in talking about analog vs digital. They are not a reciprocal pairing in the way a proper dichotomy like discrete and continuous are. — apokrisis
Forgive me for thinking you were using it in the more usual sense.... — apokrisis
I can see how you/Deleuze might be driving at a substantialist ontology - one that takes existence to be rooted in the definiteness of material being. And so the inherent properties of substance would seem more fundamental than the relational ones. — apokrisis
I understand what intensive and extensive properties mean in the standard physics context. I completely don't get your attempts to argue that they somehow reflect an analog~digital distinction. — apokrisis
No, the the digital is a subset of the analog, they are not in opposition or in a relation of exclusion. The relation is not a∨d (XOR), rather, d⊆a. Wilden: "The analog (continuum) is a set which includes the digital (discontinuum) as a subset." — StreetlightX
I don't think this is quite right. As a matter of principle, it trades too heavily on some kind of thought/world duality which I think is unsustainable, if not mystical. As far as the facts go, however, digitality is present at the level of things like gene expression and axon function in nerve cells, and require no 'thought' in order to function. — StreetlightX
The institution of the digital is a result of a decision, but the status of this decision is not 'in thought' so much as it is 'in practice' (which is why you can't 'find it' anywhere in particular). One must remain a materialist about these things. — StreetlightX
Wilden too puts the whole issue in terms of difference, although he doesn't employ the vocabulary of intensive/extensive: "There are thus two kinds of difference involved, and the distinction between them is essential. Analog differences are differences of magnitude, frequency, distribution, pattern, organization, and the like. Digital differences are those such as can be coded into distinctions and oppositions, and for this, there must be discrete elements with well-defined boundaries.. — StreetlightX
It is when you start pulling in Deleuze and "aesthetics" and other such baggage that it loses analytic clarity and becomes a romantic melange of allusions. — apokrisis
But if it agreed that the digital is itself a product of boundary setting, then, in Deleuze's terms, there ought to be a concept of difference not subordinated to differences in the concept (read: genera). That is, there are differences which are not digital differences; in the context of the thread, these are referred to as intensive differences. — StreetlightX
This is the really difficult to get bit. But it means that the reductionist instinct to make one aspect of being prior or more foundational than its "other" is always going to mislead metaphysical thought. Does the digital precede the analog, or the analog precede the digital? The whole point of an organic and pansemiotic conception of this kind of question is to focus on how each brings its other into concrete being. — apokrisis
Then we might be inclined to say something ridiculous like neither one of these is prior to the other, they are co-dependent. — Metaphysician Undercover
Before I even get to the identity part, I had a question about this part: following this, would you say that persons are "digital?" Because we have no problem with true/false, A/not-A etc. So unless we're "digital" for some reason, then it seems as if "analog" systems have no problem with symbolic logic truth function representation after all."It is impossible to represent the truth functions of symbolic logic in an analog computer, because the analog computer cannot say 'not-A'. — StreetlightX
We try to breath the "spirit" of the intuitive continuum into the "letter" of our relentlessly discrete symbols, because we want to have objective or inter-subjective discussions about this intuitive continuum. But we have to build it from digital sets, so it's arguably not the "real" continuum of intuition. — Hoo
How can there be a continuum which we know? If what we know is the digital, how could a continuum be known? This seems to be the problem. There are indications of a continuum, so we claim to know that there is a continuum, but the continuum cannot actually be known. So how do we validate our claim to know that there is a continuum? What if we are mistaken on this point, and the thing which we are calling 'the continuum" is actually discrete? Would we then have to designate something else as "the continuum", to support our claim to know that there is a continuum? That is the importance of identifying the thing which we claim as "the continuum", to see if it really is the continuum. If it is not, then either our claim to know that there is a continuum, or our claim to have identified the continuum, is wrong.Is there any continuum-in-itself apart from the one we know? — John
I can agree with Wilden. It is when you start pulling in Deleuze and "aesthetics" and other such baggage that it loses analytic clarity and becomes a romantic melange of allusions. — apokrisis
So contra your position, existence has to start with the digitisation of the analog - a primal symmetry-breaking. Or as I say, to make proper sense of this, we have to introduce the further foundational distinction of the vague~crisp. We have to reframe your LEM-based description in fully generic dichotomy-based logic. — apokrisis
I guess that depends on what one means by "real." Is the real equated here with the scientific image (Sellars) ? For me that image is only a fraction of the foggy, inter-subjective real. I say "foggy" because I'm thinking of a continuum that runs from the unreal to the perfectly real. Maybe the real is well described as axioms in common. This would include the physical world but also the "common sense" that makes more abstract conversation possible. We can double back and edit chunks of common sense, so the real is unstable or "on fire."Hoo, do you think that "intuitive continuum" refers to anything real? Isn't it more than just intuition? Would you think that continued existence, what is expressed by terms like momentum and inertia, is simply an intuition, and not supported by anything factual. If you give the status of "factual" to such terms, how can you say that the continuum is simply intuitive. — Metaphysician Undercover
How can there be a continuum which we know? If what we know is the digital, how could a continuum be known? — Metaphysician Undercover
Thank you for your series of assertions. — StreetlightX
We can double back and edit chunks of common sense, so the real is unstable or "on fire." — Hoo
That's what a difference of opinion amounts to, your series of assertions versus my series of assertions. The question is, who's series of assertions makes the most sense, and here we have only intuition to refer to. How does it make sense to choose a series of assertions, to believe in, which are counter-intuitive, but are chosen simply because they support an ontological position which is chosen for some reason other than that it makes sense intuitively? Isn't that choice of ontological position supported only by an unreasonable prejudice? — Metaphysician Undercover
To "double back and edit chunks of common sense" implies that there are principles, based in something other than common sense, which exist, and which we can refer to, for use in a judging of common sense, to edit common sense. Isn't any such principle demonstrably supported by nothing but prejudice, as described in my reply to StreetlightX? It is the very description of prejudice. What would provide you a principle whereby you could judge intuition or common-sense, a principle which could be excluded from the charge of "prejudice"? — Metaphysician Undercover
Most of "common sense" or our prejudices have to remain intact while we judge and edit a particular prejudice. Pleasure and pain are the hammers that re-shape this edifice. But the pain can be cognitive dissonance, and the pleasure can be a sense of status. It's not at all just bodily.We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction. — Neurath
The idea that there is something beyond prejudice can itself be described (though not finally, since description is apparently never final) as one more prejudice. This threatens the distinction itself of course which we need in order to get to this threatening...The observable process which Schiller and Dewey particularly singled out for generalisation is the familiar one by which any individual settles into new opinions. The process here is always the same. The individual has a stock of old opinions already, but he meets a new experience that puts them to a strain. Somebody contradicts them; or in a reflective moment he discovers that they contradict each other; or he hears of facts with which they are incompatible; or desires arise in him which they cease to satisfy. The result is an inward trouble to which his mind till then had been a stranger, and from which he seeks to escape by modifying his previous mass of opinions. He saves as much of it as he can, for in this matter of belief we are all extreme conservatives. So he tries to change first this opinion, and then that (for they resist change very variously), until at last some new idea comes up which he can graft upon the ancient stock with a minimum of disturbance of the latter, some idea that mediates between the stock and the new experience and runs them into one another most felicitously and expediently. — James
How can there be a continuum which we know? If what we know is the digital, how could a continuum be known?
That is the importance of identifying the thing which we claim as "the continuum", to see if it really is the continuum. If it is not, then either our claim to know that there is a continuum, or our claim to have identified the continuum, is wrong.
It appears like StreetlightX is arguing that we cannot even go so far as to identify the continuum, because to identify it is to imply a sameness, when the continuum is necessarily difference, as per Deleuze. My argument is that to identify it as difference is still to identify sameness, and this defeats the claim. I think that this pushes us back toward some type of mystical position, claiming that this assumed continuum is something that we cannot even talk about, like the ancient mystics used to claim about "matter". — Metaphysician Undercover
So, the continuum doesn't exist as continuum until it is conceived as such. The continuum itself is an identity for us. But then does it make any sense to say that there are no identities in nature, if nature cannot be conceived and talked about by us except in terms of identities? By this I mean that nature nowadays is generally conceived as a vast causal nexus of relations between entities that are in one sense unique and on the other hand are of specific kinds. It is uniqueness that confers identity, and uniqueness consists just in difference from everything else. It is similarity that underpins identification, and similarity consists in being understood to belong most specifically to species, and most generally to genera. — John
This is a very real issue, especially with terms of ontological or metaphysical significance. We have a conception of future and past for example. This conception models these two as pure opposition. Take a point, on one side of that point is past, the other side is future. We could build a massive epistemic structure on a conception like this. The problem is, that in the real world, and common understanding of future and past, there is an implied necessary temporal priority, past has gone by, and future is yet to come. The conception, of pure opposition, two sides of a point, fails to take this into account. Therefore any conceptual structure built on this concept is completely illusory, it fails to take into account what we are really referring to when we use the words "future" and "past". — Metaphysician Undercover
As I've said quite a few times now, the distinction between the digital and the analog is quite precisely defined by the presence of negation and self-reflexivity. — StreetlightX
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