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

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.

With a continuum, if you start talking about discrete points, you're talking about something that the rest of the continuum can only approach as a limit. That is exactly how digital (ideally) is different from analog. You don't pull an infinitely converging progression out with you when you pick out a point.

(and even then, the original sense of the terms have less to do with data than they do information). — StreetlightX

The same information can be transmitted either analog-wise or digitally... so I don't know what you're talking about there.

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

? This is what I've been saying from the beginning. Not sure what's being pointed out anywhere.

The same information can be transmitted either analog-wise or digitally... so I don't know what you're talking about there. — Mongrel

I'm referring to the distinction between information and data which is a basic one in computer science.

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

Kind of... in electronics, we think of ideal square waves, knowing that in the real world, instantaneous changes of that kind don't happen.

As TGW mentioned, it may be that down at the quantum level there really are changes of that kind... for instance when a photon pops off of a hot iron atom... the energy level of the atom abruptly drops.

? This is what I've been saying from the beginning. Not sure what's being pointed out anywhere. — StreetlightX

In that case, the thesis would be that nature is fundamentally digital.

.

I'm referring to the distinction between information and data which is a basic one in computer science. — StreetlightX

The same information can be transmitted digitally or by analog means. So.... I don't know what you're talking about.

In that case, the thesis would be that nature is fundamentally digital. — Mongrel

Go on...

So.. that was what you meant in the OP?

I'm asking you to elaborate.

Well, and also, Streelight was initially focusing on the putative fact that logic, at least binary logic, obtains in digital systems but not analog systems. My point in light of that is that we do logic without any problem. So unless we're a digital system, there's a problem with claiming that binary logic can't be done/executed outside of a digital system.

Ugh, that we work with digital systems has nothing to do with whether or not 'we are digital systems'. The latter phrase is literally meaningless, it is actual word salad.

You had claimed that binary logic can only be done on digital systems.

Us "working with a digital system" when we do logic is our brains doing something--binary logic. So unless our brains are digital systems, there's a problem with saying that only digital systems can do binary logic.

Also, your opening statement is this: "Broadly speaking, one can speak of two types of systems in nature: analog and digital."

Well, everything extant is a system in nature. So you'd have to be saying that everything is either analog or digital.

Ugh, you can't even get the terms right. I said nothing about binary logic. Seriously, you are really bad to have discussions with. And that we can process digitally structured information has zip all to do with whether or not 'we' are digital - again a meaningless phrase. Consider this my last reply to you until you can actually discuss things properly.

Rather, you're not very familiar with the concepts you're attempting to deal with. True/false is binary logic.

That might be your last reply to me, but it certainly won't be my last post pointing our your countless conceptual errors.

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. We have here defined analog as something that is fundamentally atomic. It just seems continuous the way a movie seems continuous, though its made of distinct frames. If that's an accurate characterization of nature, then analog is parasitic on digital... not the other way around.

What's really going on here is that continuous and discontinuous are opposites. They just are. A close kin to that opposition is infinite vs finite. Finite is not a subset of infinite. Infinite is not a quantity... its boundlessness... it's a negative concept.

And what we find in the continuum is... lots of infinity.

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

The latter doesn't follow the former at all. If I cut a cake into two and say that the two pieces now belong to the set 'Cake', it doesn't mean the cake was made up of pieces to begin with. I cut it. except here, negation cuts the analog.

How would there be a fact whether the cake was really made of pieces prior to cutting it or not?

That's simply telling us how an individual is thinking about it.

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

Sorry for the delayed reply, 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?

I think that's the fundamental problem here, with Deleuze, and with the aesthetic approach to epistemology in general. Insofar as it purports to be a sub-representational account of thought, it cannot be represented - it literally cannot be thought or talked about. From what I have seen, this approach throws us either into the Myth of the Given (i.e. sense-certainty), or opens us up to charges of noumenalism (both of which you've encountered to some degree on this thread). Either we can "somehow" represent the sub-representational immediately (i.e. sense certainty), or we cannot represent it at all (noumenalism). Either way, we've come to a dead end.

Thoughts?

Yep.. we all have an amazing digitizer. We call it a mind. :)

I don't like that smiley face. Can't we get different ones?

This is deep water, because I'm not sure how much of a gap there is between reason and the conception of reason. — Hoo

Try this. 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.

Notice the difference between I am reasoning, which is a particular instance of reason, reason itself, and the other person is reasoning, which is an instance of a human activity which implies reasoning. Now consider Deleuze's distinction of intensive/extensive, as outlined by StreetlightX a couple of pages back, in relation to reason as an object of analysis. We now look at reason as an object to be analyzed for intensive and extensive properties. In looking at other human beings, we have access only to the extensive properties of reason, we can measure and judge the individual's activities for reasonableness, based solely on the extensive properties. But within ourselves, we have direct access to the intensive properties of reason. We can observe sensations, feelings, and emotions, internal things which have direct influence on reason. These things are fluid continuities, which only become particular, "digitalized" instances when relegated to memory. But in memory, the intensive properties, the fluid continuity of an undivided one moment to the next moment (reasoning in action), is removed. Thus in memory, the intensive properties of reasoning are removed, and when the memory is remembered, it is placed into the context of the intensive properties of that moment. This is also what occurs when I communicate a thought to you, the intensive properties of thinking are removed from the thought when it is expressed verbally, or written in phrases; you perceive extensive properties, as the thought comes to exist within the intensive context of your thinking mind.

From this, we may produce assumed "states" of mind which can be projected onto others, being understood as extensive properties. I have not actually read Deleuze's work, but I believe that he assigns a deep incompatibility between intensive and extensive properties, such that any conversion, which is to understand intensive properties as extensive is deficient. Therefore we cannot truly get at the intensive properties of another individual's reasoning, because we only get there through being exposed to the extensive properties, and tying to infer the intensive. Nor can we get to the intensive properties of any existing thing by understanding them as extensive. However, we do have a certain understanding of the intensive, through inductive generalities, laws.

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

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.

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

Here we approach what Steetlight has identified as "goalseeking system". A prejudice, or investment as you call it, is a past act, with a view toward the future. Sometimes, as time passes, and the view toward the future does not pan out, it becomes time to consider dropping the investment. The issue I referred to is that all of the goals are interrelated. So what I am referring to is not an issue of dropping one investment in favour of another more important one, it is a more complex issue. 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.

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..

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

Well, the description of a square wave, as a wave which instantaneously changes from crest to trough, and vise versa, seems somewhat naïve to me. Wikipedia suggests that the effect is produced though the use of harmonics, and filtering out unwanted aspects.

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

Check my preceding reply to Hoo, for an interpretation of this issue.

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

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.

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

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.

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

For me the wrongness of a judgement is one and the same with its dissonance in the context of other judgements. Whether one should drop a "wrong" judgement supporting more important investments will itself be determined by all of the rest of the networked investments. To ask after a "general solution" is moving more in the direction of "reason" as I originally intended it as a normative image for thinking. Is it reasonable-for-our-community to maintain such an investment?

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

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).

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

The answer is the same as before. When we are talking about the ontology of a modelling system, we have two realms in play - the material and the symbolic. And the vague~crisp can apply as a developmental distinction in either. And indeed to the modelling relation as a whole. The vague~crisp is about a hierarchy of symmetry-breakings, a succession of increasingly specified dichotomies.

So in the symbolic realm, a vague state of symbolism is indexical. A still vaguer state is iconic.

If you say "look, a cat", that 's pretty definite. If you point at a cat, I might be a little uncertain as to exactly what your finger indicates. If you make mewing and purring noises, I would have to make an even greater guess about the meaning you might intend.

So as I argued using the example of the wax cylinder, informational symmetry breaking can be weak because it is easily reversible - still strongly entangled in the physics of the situation - or it can be strongly broken in being at the digital end of the spectrum and thus as physics-free as possible.

If I were to say "look, the universe", then physically the words involve no more effort that talking about a cat. But pointing gets harder, and pantomiming might really work up a sweat.

But then any form of communication or representation has already crossed the epistemic cut Rubicon in creating a memory trace of the world and so made the step to being physics-free. So even vague iconicity is already crisp in that sense. And thus there is another whole discussion about how the matter~symbol dichotomy arose in nature. And a further whole discussion about whether the abiotic world - with its dissipative organisation - has pansemiotic structure, and so this notion of "digitality" as negatively-self reflexive demarcation (or the constraint of freedom) has general metaphysical import there.

We can see that discrete~continuous is just such a general metaphysical dichotomy - the two crisp counter-matched possibilities that would do the most to divide our uncertainty about the nature of existence. And I would remind you of your opening statement where you said this was all about a generic metaphysical dichotomy that applied to all "systems"....

Broadly speaking, one can speak of two types of systems in nature: analog and digital. — StreetlightX

So that sweeping claim is what I have been addressing. And my argument is that when it comes to reality as a system, it is just the one system - formed by dividing against itself perhaps.

This is why I find your exposition confused - although also on the right track. So I tried to show that to resolve the dualism implicit in your framing here, we have to ascend to Peircean triadic semiosis to recover the holism of a systems' monism. We have to add a dimension of development - the vague~crisp - so as to be able to explain how the crisply divided could arise from some common source.

Your opening statement would be accurate if it made it clear that you are talking about symbolic systems or representational systems - systems that are already the other side of the epistemic cut in being sufficiently physics-free to form their own memory traces and so transcendently can have something to say about the material state of the world.

But instead you just made a direct analogy between analog~digital signal encoding in epistemic systems and continuous~discrete phenomena in ontic systems.

Now again, there is something important in this move. It has to be done in a sense because the very idea of a physical world - as normally understood in its materialistic sense - just cannot see the further possibility of semiotic regulation, the new thing that is physics-free memory or syntax-based constraints. So you can't extract symbols from matter just by having a full knowledge of physical law. As you/Wilden say, the digital, the logical, the syntactical, appears to reach into the material world from another place to draw its lines, make its demarcations, point to the sharp divisions that make for a biinary "this and a that".

So saying in a general metaphysical way that the material world is analog, and the digital is sprung on this material world from "outside itself" as a further crisply negating/open-endedly recursive surprise, is a really important ontological distinction.

But then confusion ensues if one only talks about the source of crispness and the fact of its imposition, and neglects to fit in its "other", the vagueness which somehow is the "material ground" that takes the "formal mark" of the binary bit. Or even the analog trace.

So to talk generically about reality as a system - which indeed is a step up from process philosophy in talking about symbol as well as matter, hierarchy as well as flow - is where we probably agree in a basic way. Structuralism was all about that. Deconstructionism was also about that - in the negative sense of trying to unravel all symbolic distinctions. Deleuze was about that I accept.

But again, the metaphysics of systems is always going to be muddy without being able to speak about the ontically vague - Peircean Firstness, Anaximander's Apeiron, the modern quantum roil. Sure we can talk about grades of crispness - iconic vs indexical vs symbolic. But to achieve metaphysical generality, we have to be able to define crispness (computational digitality, or material substantiality/particularity/actuality) in terms of what crispness itself is not.

And to return to your OP.....

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

...this is where your keenness to just dichotomise, and not ground your dichotomy as itself a developmental act, starts to become a real blinkering issue.

Analog signals are still signals (as Mongrel points out). They are differences to "us" as systems of interpretance. An analog computer outputs an answer which may be inherently vaguer than a digital device, but did use to have the advantage of being quicker. And also even more accurate in that early digital devices were 8 bit rather than 16 bit or 64 bit - or however many decimal places one needs to encode a continuous world in floating point arithmetic and actually draw a digitally sharp line close enough to the materially correct place (if such a correct place even exists in a non-linear and quantumly uncertain world).

So whether variation or difference is encoded analogically or digitally, it already is an encoding of a signal (and involves thus a negation, a bounding, of noise). Then while the digital seems inherently crisp in being a physics-free way to draw lines to mark boundaries - digital lines having no physical width - in practice there still remains a physical trade-off.

The fat fuzzy lines of analog computing can be more accurate at least in the early stages of technical development. The digital lines are always perfectly crisply defined whether they use 8-bit precision or 64-bit precision - this is so because a continuous value is just arbitrarily truncated (negated) at that number of decimal places. But that opens up the new issue of whether the lines are actually being dropped in the right precise place when it comes to representing nature. Being digital also magnifies the measurement problem - raises it now to the level of an "epistemic crisis". Ie: the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

So it just isn't good enough to say analog signals can be signals without the need for negative demarcation and the open-ended recursion that allows. A bell rings a note - produces a sine wave - because vibrations are bounded by a metal dome and so are forced to conform to a harmonic whole number. Identity or individuation does arise in analog processes - in virtue of them being proto-digital in their vaguer way.

Yes, this is a complication of the simpler starting point you made. It is several steps further down the chain of argument when it comes to a systems ontology. And as I say, you/Wilden are starting with a correct essential distinction. We have to pull apart the realms of matter and symbol to start to understand reality in general as a semiotic modelling relation with the power to self-organise its regular habits.

But for some reason you always get snarky when I move on to the complexities that then ensue - the complexities that systems ontologists find fruitful to discuss. The vague~crisp axis of development being a primary one.

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

So basically you want to use words not maths. And my point is that there is a reason why maths is where we arrive. Logic is itself a branch of maths in its highest state of development you realise?

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.

And then it is not as though I am saying there are no dangers in a more abstract level of discourse about nature. We are in some sense starting to work blind - allowing our formal tools to take over the job of explaining nature.

But this is the way things have gone because pragmatically they have worked. Maths is unreasonably effective as they say. Reality is surprisingly intelligible.

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.

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. But in being a preliminary activity, it wouldn't replace the higher level of abstraction that mathematical discourse can attain. It is not an "alternative" in that sense.

Logic is itself a branch of maths in its highest state of development you realise? — 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.

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

It is not reasoning which I am talking about, it is observation. So I beg to differ. Description refers to qualities in general, measurement refers to quantities. A quality is an attribute, or property of a thing. A quantity is a particular type of attribute. 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.

I am not "advocating for a less crisply developed level of reasoning and measurement". I am advocating for a more comprehensive form of observation, one which considers all qualities, not just those which we have the capacity to measure.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Either way, the point is that they are the development of a more abstracted level of language. And increased precision doesn't have to mean a lesser scope. Quite the opposite in fact. Greater generality and greater particularity go together here.

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

More nonsense. Science talks about qualities in a maximally abstract fashion - notions like time, space, energy, information, entropy. And it is that clarity about qualities that engenders clarity about quantification.

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

...and ignoring Occam's razor. There is a good reason for wanting to quantify reality using the least number of qualitative concepts.

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

Do you have a list of these unmeasurables in mind? I guess it consists of the usual things like poetry and spirit; the mind, the divine, the meaningful, the aesthetic; beauty, good and truth.

You see I reach a different conclusion when we arrive at such abstractions without apparent ways to quanitify them - except by socio-cultural appeals to "look inwards and experience their phenomenological reality". To me, this shows we just don't have a philosophical-strength understanding of what we want to talk about.

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.

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

Why do you say "cannot" as if a no-go theorem applied. ;)

But I'm not really saying that the truths of maths or logic can only be articulated in an absolutely general syntax of operators and variables. We can use ordinary (technical) language to talk through the equations with more semantic background. We can translate to a certain extent back downwards, just as we can abstract from ordinary speech towards a mathematical expression.

So some kind of translatability is presumed. All scientists, metaphysicians and mathematicians have a native language through which they were introduced steadily to some domain of high abstraction.

But then something important still usually feels lost in translation when they have to go from abstractions back to words. And what is lost is the clarity gained by abstracting from words to abstractions.