Your worldview determines what you will regard as 'data'. — Wayfarer

So do you choose a closed worldview that doesn't update its beliefs, or instead an open one that builds in continuous inquiry?

Well, if as the OP says, 'to have a metaphysics' is to have a way to 'select' among the kinds of things that 'exist'; and if you say that the 'kinds of things that exist' are limited to 'the kinds of things that the natural sciences are able to discover' - then is that an open or a closed model?

I don't see you - or your sources - as enemies so I don't feel compromised by playing on your field, by your rules. As to the worldview I'm confidently building upon worm-eaten and ancient foundations - well, honestly, I'm not too confident about anything philosophically - my confidence is limited to a few relatively small regions, none of which are philosophical.

I don't understand the significance of your mechanic/organic distinction here. Is it a rhetorical thing of I cited poetry and 'if you want to play that game, well, guess what, *you're* actually the mechanical one and what do you think of that?'

Or are you saying that trying to find flaws in someone else's model is to be 'mechanistic' (??)

Either way, I'm not trying to poke holes in the model itself - I'm trying to understand how, as a part of nature, it relates to nature as a whole (a triadic metaphysical nature, if you want, not a spatiotemporal matrix with arbitrary laws and a starter pack of matter/stuff.) The model itself certainly couldn't exist in that symmetrical purely potential apeiron-thing/space/whatever. Yet, using the model, we can talk truthfully about it. There are, apparently, truths about the apeiron even before truths can be spoken. So maybe that's what this all boils down to. What's your theory of truth?

(footnote: what's up with the discrete/continuous bit? there are two opposites which function as limits and things operate somewhere in between? That's a solid example of the fruit of science and speculation? It sounds like a readers digest version of Bergson lol jk i love you apo but it does sound like that)

It seems to me to be open in the form of a promissory note: that science will continue to come up with new kind of things that exist, that ever new and different metaphysics may be based upon. But this would be considering metaphysics only to be concerned with the way the world hangs together, and the assumption that all and everything we can possibly know must be part of the world as it is conceived in empiricist or physicalist terms. And even if it would allow for new kinds of existents it would never allow for new ways, (beyond new technologies or models) of knowing them; so it would not allow for new kinds of ways.

Well, if as the OP says, 'to have a metaphysics' is to have a way to 'select' among the kinds of things that 'exist'; and if you say that the 'kinds of things that exist' are limited to 'the kinds of things that the natural sciences are able to discover' - then is that an open or a closed model? — Wayfarer

Open. By design. So it is axiomatic. The process claims only to minimise our uncertainty.

If you believe in some different epistemology derived from an alternative axiomatic basis (one less idealist perhaps) then go for it. Justify away. (Revelation, Platonism???)

@apokrisis could you also maybe shine some light on what you mean by 'mathematical' and 'rigorous'? Generally, when you use these words on the board, you appear to be referring to clear, distinct terms - 'crisply' differentiated opposites. But it's easy to create crisply differentiated things - with that usage Henry James or even Tom Clancy could be considered 'rigorous' and 'mathematical.' Over on the old pf you called one of my analyses of True Detective mathematical when it quite obviously wasn't (tho ty it was flattering) Are you just dumbing it down for those of us who can't do math? and, if so, why are you doing that? It's a little patronizing.

(some background - one of my longtime friends is dating a guy going for a phd in math - we discuss his work sometimes and he displays the patience and graciousness of a specialist talking to a layman. He's good with metaphors. But he wouldn't pretend that a crisp distinction between x and y is 'mathematical' because he respects his interlocutors well enough not to pretend that stark differentiation *is* math. I assume, based on your assurance, that you have similar mathematical facility (right?) so i wonder what accounts for the difference in approach?)

The process claims only to minimise our uncertainty.

If you believe in some different epistemology derived from an alternative axiomatic basis (one less idealist perhaps) then go for it. Justify away. (Revelation, Platonism???) — Apokrisis

About this 'minimizing uncertainty' - I was reading a review by Galen Stawson the other day, in which he observed that 'physics, with its equations, only ever gives abstract structural descriptions of reality. It never tells us anything about the intrinsic nature of matter, in so far as its 'intrinsic nature' is more than its structure. Eddington and then Russell developed this point well in the early 20th century: ‘Physics is mathematical,’ Russell wrote, ‘not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover. For the rest, our knowledge is negative.’ He went further, observing that ‘as regards the world in general, both physical and mental, everything that we know of its intrinsic character is derived from the mental side’ and – again, many years later – that ‘we know nothing about the intrinsic quality of physical events except when these are mental events that we directly experience. 1

Whereas, I think naturalist methodology assumes the reality of the objects of experience, and assumes that, given our status as observers, we are able to arrive at some definitive theory of their nature. That is the underlying assumption of the 'mind-independent' nature of the subjects of observation; what is 'there anyway', in the absence of observers. That's what I believe a lot of modern empiricism tacitly assumes.

Wiith respect to your reference to Platonism, the thread did start with the Parmenides. It is a highly enigmatic work and not easily summarized.

Parmenides describes the journey of the poet, escorted by maidens ("the daughters of the Sun made haste to escort me, having left the halls of Night for the light"), from the ordinary daytime world to a strange destination, outside our human paths. Carried in a whirling chariot, and attended by the daughters of Helios the Sun, the man reaches a temple sacred to an unnamed goddess (variously identified by the commentators as Nature, Wisdom, Necessity or Themis), by whom the rest of the poem is spoken. The goddess resides in a well-known mythological space: where Night and Day have their meeting place. Its essential character is that here all opposites are undivided, or one.

From Wikipedia.

According to McEvilly, The Shape of Ancient Thought, references such as 'the meeting place of night and day' and 'the union of opposites' represent non-dualism which, he contends, was a significant cross-cultural influence on the Greek and Indian philosophers, partially from trade but also from the common source of mythological cosmologies amongst the info-european peoples (e.g. Orphism). 'Outside human paths', 'whirling chariots' and 'goddesses' are arguably references to trance or visionary states of being.

Clearly it's a challenge for interpreters - I think it's was always regarded as a difficult text even by Plato. But I make that point, to illustrate the kind of challenge it represents. I don't think, for instance, you could appeal to it as a kind of 'proto-naturalism', like you might arguably be able to do with some of the other Pre-Socratics.

'selection' is anything but voluntary in Delezue, and selection is always the result of an 'encounter' with or 'interference of' a 'question-problem complex' which forces one to creatively engage and fabulate responses as a result (the quoted phrases are Deleuze's)

If I understand Deleuze correctly ( I'm talking chapter II of DR here) time itself is a kind of traumatic aftershock, the effect of a disrupted equilibrium.To be in time is to be called upon to act, to set things right (that whole hamlet/time-out-of-joint analysis. (which, imo, is a a kind of rehabilitation/surpassing of Heidegger's call/conscience analysis in division 2 of B&T) ) You could say, maybe, that to exist as dasein - to be in time - is to be forced to select, and that what we'll select is already largely determined by the trauma that produced the time we exist in (as?) Our freedom, then, wouldn't concern what we select (do I choose x or y? vanilla or chocolate? the left door or the right?) but would be the spiritual process of navigating to the place/moment where we have (1) the courage to 'throw the dice' and (2) the moral fortitude (and practical capacity) to affirm what lands. Selection would be simultaneously voluntary and forced.

That may sound wishy-washy, but I don't think it is.

I don't understand the significance of your mechanic/organic distinction here. — csalisbury

If you want the full answer from the biosemiotic perspective, that would take some explaining. You might want to google howard pattee + biosemiosis, or stan salthe + infodynamics, for the sharpest analysis in terms of dissipative structure theories.

But the simple systems science answer - which bases itself directly on Aristotelean naturalism - looks at it in terms of the four causes.

So the mechanical is reality modelled in terms of just material and efficient cause. In other words, formal and final cause have to be supplied by an external creator, a transcendent mind. Then the organic is immanent by contrast as all four causes, including formal and final, arise internally through self-organising development.

Are you just dumbing it down for those of us who can't do math? and, if so, why are you doing that? It's a little patronizing. — csalisbury

If you have no problem coping with Pattee and Salthe, then great. Let me know how you go.

But he wouldn't pretend that a crisp distinction between x and y is 'mathematical' because he respects his interlocutors well enough not to pretend that stark differentiation *is* math. I assume, based on your assurance, that you have similar mathematical facility (right?) so i wonder what accounts for the difference in approach? — csalisbury

I'm not talking about maths as maths. I'm talking about the particular maths I would employ - such as symmetry breaking, statistical mechanics, hierarchy theory, quantum mechanics, non-linear dynamics.

So there are certain mathematical/logical structures that I would appeal to here, not maths in some general sense as a practice.

And remember my response to the OP was that SX ought to use crisp formal mathematical concepts in place of his vague terminology. I said he should think in terms of reciprocal relations - as in dichotomies - rather than his "selection". Or hierarchical relations rather than his "hinges".

So if you want examples of what a more mathematically rigorous approach looks like, that was already it.

*stutters into the mike, adjusts collar* could you, um, comment on that?

Get ready for the dance of the seven veils;)

It never tells us anything about the intrinsic nature of matter, in so far as its 'intrinsic nature' is more than its structure. — Wayfarer

Well does matter have an intrinsic nature? Hasn't structural realism been the answer since Aristotle's hylomorphism?

Whereas, I think naturalist methodology assumes the reality of the objects of experience, — Wayfarer

Not sure why scientists call themselves modellers then.

Its essential character is that here all opposites are undivided, or one.

That's why Parmenides is so useful as the dichotomous contrast to Heraclitus in teaching Ancient Greek philosophy 101.

But remember Heraclitus was actually a dichotomous thinker - flux and logos, or local degrees of freedoms and global "ratiional" constraints. While Parmenides only leveraged Zenoian paradox and made zero sense if taken literally.

So I'm happy if Parmenides has to be crossed off the list of proto-system thinkers. He was never on it to begin with.

Nice Parmenides quote. It illustrates nicely the objection from the perspective of spirit and the broader view.

So the mechanical is reality modelled in terms of just material and efficient cause. In other words, formal and final cause have to be supplied by an external creator, a transcendent mind. Then the organic is immanent by contrast as all four causes, including formal and final, arise internally through self-organising development.

So is there a ghost in the machine after all?

Heh, I was literally reading those passages this morning. But yeah, I don't think it's wishy washy at all: the whole repetition chapter is set up to mirror the structure of the difference chapter. Where chapter 1 seeks to discover the realm of intensive difference acting 'beneath' the realm of conceptual difference, chapter 2 seeks to discover 'underneath' the time of representation (active synthesis), an intensive time of repetition (passive synthesis), and to do so in each of the temporal dimensions (past, present, future). And at each point Deleuze gives quite precise arguments as to why the time of representation always needs to be accounted for in terms of intensive time.

As far as selection is concerned, it takes place at the level of the first and second syntheses of time (contraction of habit and synthesis of memory), while the third synthesis (eternal return) ensures that a selection must be made at every point. It's basically the imperative of an inescapable 'NEXT' which forces the affirmation of selection at every 'point' in time. So it's a question of whether we comport ourselves to affirm the singularity of this imperative (throw of the dice), or whether or not we 'fall' back into treating time in terms of probability and 'bare' repetition - generality ("things have always gone on this way, so..."). Can we make ourselves equal to that which dissolves the solidity of our identity at every moment (the Deleuzian ethical imperative: become equal to the unequal within us)?

The whole thing is Nietzschian from top to bottom basically (with a Bergsonian spin re: memory): do we act actively or re-actively to the singularity of the Moment (cf. the parable of the Moment in Zarathustra). The difference from Nietzsche (this is Bergson) tho is that selection takes place not with respect to future 'choices' (as you said, 'x or y? vanilla or chocolate?'), but with respect to how we bring the past to bear on the present: "This is why destiny accords so badly with determinism but so well with freedom: freedom lies in choosing the levels [of the pure past]". Sorry if it seems like I'm just recounting my reading and using you as a foil - I kinda am.

Metaphysics doesn't appear to be conceivable as a priori and independent of empirical observation ever since the collapse of the analytic-synthetic distinction. An insight I would personally tribute to Wittgenstein rather than to Quine, given how the abolishment of logical necessity is a simple corollary of the abolishment of the notion of privately obeying a rule. For there is no example of logical necessity to be found in the outside world.

Information theory, specifically the minimum description length principle seems at first glance to be the closest thing to a theory of naturalised epistemology, given its natural identification of ontology as an empirically updated data compression code that is not critically dependent on the a priori/a posteriori distinction in the way that classical metaphysics assumes ontology to be. Perhaps deleuze reached a similar conclusion through introspection.

Yet the identification of information theory as a transcendental principle of a naturalised metaphysics that lies as a foundation of certainty beneath all other knowledge and understanding looks to be a mistake for the same reason as earlier, namely that it is just another example of a rule of logic with no meaning outside of praxis, and that to conceive of it as being metaphysical is to appeal once again to an absolute and private notion of rule following or of logical necessity.

This is why univocity becomes so important: univocity 'ontologizes' selection, it gives it the status of being itself. Thus re: the 'hinge' of selection in my post above, Deleuze's own 'hinge' will be the eternal return: it's the eternal return that 'selects' what returns, and of course what returns is 'difference'. — StreetlightX

As far as selection is concerned, it takes place at the level of the first and second syntheses of time (contraction of habit and synthesis of memory), while the third synthesis (eternal return) ensures that a selection must be made at every point. It's basically the imperative of an inescapable 'NEXT' which forces the affirmation of selection at every 'point' in time. — StreetlightX

StreetlightX, are you able to explain a basis for the assumed "eternal return"? I ask this, because there must be a principle whereby a "return" is necessitated. And, whether or not a true selection is indicated here, would depend upon the nature of this "return".

"Return" implies a repetition of the same. By means of return, the very same would be repeated, unless difference was selected for. If there is difference within this repetition, then it is false or misleading to call it a "return". The difference therefore, must be separate from, or independent from, the return, which is I beliueve, by definition of "return", a necessitation of the same.

If Deleuze proceeds on a principle of difference, then selection of that difference is allowed for, but true "return" is denied. Then this so-called "return" is not a return at all. If there is no return, then the very thing which ensures the continuity of existence, that actuality which forces the immediate selection of difference from the realm of possibility, at each moment of time, must be accounted for by some principle other than return.

I probably can, but I really don't want to. Deleuze's use of the eternal return is easily - for me anyway - one of the most complex aspects of his philosophy, and while I kind of already have, I don't really want to make this thread about Deleuze, so much as about the notion of selection and it's possible usefulness in thinking about metaphysics. Suffice to say that the eternal return is Deleuze's own 'mechanism' of selection, the formulation of which is meant to function immanently, rather than in a transcendent manner as it does with many of the thinkers listed in the OP. Also, I simply don't like Deleuze's use of the phrase itself. I get what he's trying to do with it - it's basically an incredibly clever rejoinder to Plato - but it's unnecessarily confusing and leads to objections exactly like the one you've formulated. Sorry if this is a bit of a disappointing reply, but it's not a topic I'm keen to discuss, especially with those unversed in Deleuze already.

I agree that it's almost certainly a Porphyrian Aristotle in the background here, but in truth, I don't think I did justice to Deleuze's reading in the OP. In reality, the engagement with Aristotle in D&R takes place almost exclusively with respect to Aristotle's impositions upon difference. If anything, what is 'selected' for is not where individuals fall under in terms of genera and species (as I put it in the OP), but the kind of difference which is given legitimacy in Aristotle. Aristotle 'selects for' specific difference, while ruling out, as ontologically illegitimate as it were, generic difference - hence the turn to equivocal/analogical Being. — StreetlightX

As I said, I don't think this does justice to the complexity of Aristotle's metaphysics, for a couple of reasons. First, I'm not even sure it makes much sense to talk about specific or generic difference for Aristotle---as mentioned, this seems to be a Porphyrian element extrinsic to the way Aristotle himself thought. What matters is the form of life of an organism, not whether some "specific difference" occurs. Second, this has as an important consequence that Aristotle doesn't "select" for "specific difference" in opposition to "generic difference", since those terms simply don't apply. So, third, that is definitely not the underlying reason for "the turn to equivocal Being" (pace Deleuze's convoluted argument). There is a lot that could be said in regards to this last question, but here I'd note only that (i) the Greek term for "to be" is already equivocal, as can be gathered from Charles Kahn's remarkable studies to this effect (The Verb "Be" in Ancient Greek) and (ii) this linguistic data buttresses, along with Aristotle's logical analysis of the way assertion works and his biological investigations into the diverse forms of life of various organisms, his idea that being is equivocal.

So basically, I think Deleuze may have been to quick in his dismissal of Aristotle, and there may be some problems for his argument for univocity in the first chapter of DR because of this. But I may have already strayed too far from the OP, so I won't pursue this line here.

As I said to Moliere earlier in the thread, the associations of language here might lead us astray, because despite it's 'voluntarist' tenor, 'selection' is anything but voluntary in Delezue, and selection is always the result of an 'encounter' with or 'interference of' a 'question-problem complex' which forces one to creatively engage and fabulate responses as a result (the quoted phrases are Deleuze's). The kind of 'phenomenology' - if we may call it that - of Lewis being 'gripped' by the necessity of imposing the sorts of divisions he does is very much in keeping with the Deleuzian conception of philosophy as involving a 'pedagogy of the concept', where creation - or in this case selection - is very much a matter of imposition, of 'subjective dissolution', if we may put it that way. — StreetlightX

That sounds reasonable.

Also, I simply don't like Deleuze's use of the phrase itself. I get what he's trying to do with it - it's basically an incredibly clever rejoinder to Plato - but it's unnecessarily confusing and leads to objections exactly like the one you've formulated.

Yeah, same, it confused me at first and now it just bugs me. It's pretty clear that, for Nietzsche, the eternal return is a thought experiment which serves as an ethical heuristic. It's not an ontological thesis at all. Maybe you could make the claim that Nietzsche's work as a whole supports this ontological idea that Deleuze has dubbed 'eternal return' (I have no idea, I haven't read much Nietzsche since high school) but either way, it's still a bad term to employ.

But the simple systems science answer - which bases itself directly on Aristotelean naturalism - looks at it in terms of the four causes.

So the mechanical is reality modelled in terms of just material and efficient cause. In other words, formal and final cause have to be supplied by an external creator, a transcendent mind. Then the organic is immanent by contrast as all four causes, including formal and final, arise internally through self-organising development.

No, I mean I understand the broad difference between mechanic and organic (teleology) and I think anyone who's spent much time on this board has been beaten half to death with the whole immanent vs transcendent thing. I - we - get the difference (the implications are another matter.) So, but no, that's not what I was I confused about.

What I didn't understand was your suggestion that my asking after the ontological status of your model meant that I was still thinking in mechanistic terms. I still don't. I'm hoping you could shine a little light there?

And I'm still curious what your theory of truth is. Or if you even care about that kind of thing? and, if not, why not?

I'm not talking about maths as maths. I'm talking about the particular maths I would employ - such as symmetry breaking, statistical mechanics, hierarchy theory, quantum mechanics, non-linear dynamics.

So there are certain mathematical/logical structures that I would appeal to here, not maths in some general sense as a practice.

And remember my response to the OP was that SX ought to use crisp formal mathematical concepts in place of his vague terminology. I said he should think in terms of reciprocal relations - as in dichotomies - rather than his "selection". Or hierarchical relations rather than his "hinges".

So if you want examples of what a more mathematically rigorous approach looks like, that was already it.

The biggest problem I have with this explanation is that it's not really true - you constantly use 'crisp' and 'rigorous' and 'mathematical' to refer to non-mathematical neat dichotomies, as with that true detective analysis way back when. I'm sure I'd struggle a whole bunch with pattee and whomever, so I understand the need to simplify. What waries me is the way you play fast and loose with a whole bunch of terms, as though you suspect your audience won't know the difference. The way you talk about math and science - Idk, man, it's not the way other people who know hard stuff well talk about it to the uninitiated. At least in my experience. There's something a little coquettish to your style lol jk I love you apo, but there is.

Anyway, I wasn't referring to your initial response to the OP, because you never mentioned math in it. But if that really was what you were doing in that post - suggesting mathematical substitutes drawn from irl scientific fields - your inclusion of 'dialectic' alongside 'reciprocal relations' etc. is odd. 'dialectic' is certainly not a 'crisp formal mathematical concept.' So are you using 'mathematical' to mean something which extends beyond actual, like, you know, math? Or are there 'crisp' concepts which aren't mathematical, and 'dialectic' is one of them?

There's this thing you have with 'crisp' - which is very interesting. I mean it's interesting that the word you use most, and seem to find immense satisfaction in, is not itself any more 'crisp, formal, mathematical' than 'selection' or 'hinge.'

Do you find that interesting? What do you think about it? It seems interesting right!

I didn't understand your suggestion that my asking after the ontological status of your model meant that I was thinking in mechanistic terms. I still don't. — csalisbury

Your line of attack was "your own model is clenched and curled up super tight brooking only those findings and ideas which will reinforce".

My reply was that my model is like that only in the sense of a seed waiting to unfurl. So it is in fact a recursively open-ended and hierarchically generative model - a properly organic one.

Mine is a semiotic approach that is based on the search for a core symmetry breaking process. And this core process has been identified by a series of key writers - starting with Anaximander and his notion of apokrisis or "separating out". :)

In modern times, Peirce's semiotic, Rosen's modelling relation, Pattee's epistemic cut, and Salthe's basic triadic system, are all even sharper approaches to an answer based on the understanding that reality is a product of "matter and sign".

So my claim is that semiotic metaphysics is the "true" model of organic causality. And then that this model is best understood in terms of its "other", which is going to be the standard issue lumpen materialism that can be generally classified as "classical mechanics".

The mechanical view of causality revolves around a familiar family of principles (and their "others), namely reductionism (vs holism), determinism (vs contingency), monadism (vs anti-totalising), locality (vs quantum nonlocality), atomism (vs continuity).

So what I said was that in your attempts to criticise me, you tried to use the notions of mechanical discourse to show me as "other" to what you implicitly hold to be "the correct position". And I replied by pointing out that that only shows you are wedded to that mechanical discourse. You rely on its "truth" to ground your "truth". But to deal with my position, you would have to appreciate how it stands quite outside this little 18th century romanticism vs enlightenment spat you might be imagining.

And I'm still curious what your theory of truth is. Or if you even care about that kind of thing? and, if not, why not? — csalisbury

How can you still be curious, honestly? What more do I need to say except Peircean Pragmatism? Or Rosen's modelling relations?

Truth is a triadic sign relation. It is a process of constraining uncertainty using semiosis.

The biggest problem I have with this explanation is that it's not really true - you constantly use 'crisp' and 'rigorous' and 'mathematical' to refer to non-mathematical neat dichotomies, as with that true detective analysis way back when. — csalisbury

True Detective turned out to be shit as philosophy, so I don't even remember whatever it was that has got your goat here.

And note that "crisp" is a technical term that a biosemiotician would oppose to "vague". So it has a particular communal meaning. Although I like it because it is also quite a self-explanatory everyday language term.

So when I use "crisp", I do mean it "mathematically". That is I am defining it dichotomistically as the "other" of "vague". And thus formally, I am saying crisp = 1/vague - the relation being the reciprocal or inverse operation that is a dichotomy.

In case you don't follow that, crisp = 1/vague means that crispness is defined as being the least possible amount of the vague. An infinitesimal quantity. Or the furthest possible countable distance away.

odd. 'dialectic' is certainly not a 'crisp formal mathematical concept.' — csalisbury

Perhaps you see by now that it can be?

There's this thing you have with 'crisp' - which is very interesting. I mean it's interesting that the word you use most, and seem to find immense satisfaction in, is not itself any more 'crisp, formal, mathematical' than 'selection' or 'hinge.'

Do you find that interesting? What do you think about it? It seems interesting right! — csalisbury

I'm guessing you might be feeling increasingly embarrassed at your half-arsed taunts by now.

buuut apo, I still don't understand where i levied an 18th century romantic stance othering you as 'mechanistic.' You keep insisting that's what I'm doing -in fact you accuse basically anyone who disagrees or has questions of this - but, though I understand this spat, I can't for the life of me figure out how I'm invoking it. One of us does indeed seem to be quite concerned with this 'spat' and to imagine it everywhere - but I don't think it's me. Is this because i quoted a poem? It feels like you're pasting a cardboard version of william blake over me, and then arguing with him - it's bizarre.

As to 'crisp', I'd never thought of it as being inversely related to 'vague' but now its mathematical pedigree is clear to me and, yes, I'm quite embarassed.

edit: ok did the googling - it's a set theory thing, right? why didn't you say that! What I'm still not clear on is how any of many of your usages of the term can be anything but metaphorical ? What I'm saying is your distinction between 'crisp,' mathematical' terms and bad vague metaphors has some merit, but when you use it against others it often becomes something of a bastardized version of itself - clearly, terms are crisp or vague based onthe context of their usage, not as a function of whether they're derived from a mathematical field (as 'dialectic' for instance, is not.)

I think it is the case that Apokrisis' philosophy is essentially drawn from and based around the life sciences, specifically in respect to biological sciences, so that the metaphysics it entails is a consequence of that. I don't think it is obviously reductionist but I do notice that it has a way of dealing with any kind of question on it's terms. It is extremely skillful and generally constructive, but its concerns are not necessary those of metaphysics qua metaphysics.

I still don't understand where i levied an 18th century romantic stance othering you as 'mechanistic.' — csalisbury

So do you accept that my approach is "clenched and curled up super tight" because it describes the generative algorithm at the heart of my "semiotic organicism" and not - as you implied - simply because I suffer from some stubborn unwillingness to consider any other metaphysical possibility?

Your charge was that I am guilty of holding to "a set and sedentary framework". I am replying that is hardly unreasonable if that framework happens to be the right one - and I can happily show how I've arrived at it by a process of elimination.

If you want a scholarly discussion, you can have it. But by your own admission, you "haven't read" any of the relevant scholarship. Let me know when you've made a start.

I probably can, but I really don't want to. — StreetlightX

OK sure, I can understand that. But you've already said that this eternal return "ensures that a selection must be made at every point". So I take it to be a kind of necessity rather than a selection itself. As the thing which necessitates selection, it cannot itself be selected for, it is a necessity. So if eternal return is a metaphysical principle of Derrida's, then metaphysics goes beyond selection, according to this necessity.

However, I see that you have defined a separation between metaphysics and ontology, and eternal return appears to be an ontological principle. Am I correct to assume that there is a separation between selection, as metaphysical, and eternal return as ontological? Ontology deals with "what is", and this is necessity, while metaphysics deals with selection.

I think that there is a question concerning the relationship between these two. In the op it is said that metaphysics selects the field, and ontology operates within that field. But when you refer to Deleuze, the inverse is implied, that the ontological, eternal return necessitates selection. However, you also said "it's the eternal return that 'selects' what returns, and of course what returns is 'difference'". Now, there seems to be some ambiguity in your posts, could you clarify one thing for me? Do you think that the eternal return actually selects, or does the eternal return necessitate selection?

I think it is the case that Apokrisis' philosophy is essentially drawn from and based around the life sciences — Wayfarer

I don't really claim anything as mine or original. That is why I am at pains always to start with Anaximander - the first bloody metaphysician! :)

If you want the path I followed, it began in ecology, shifted to computer science, then paleoanthropology, then neuroscience/philosophy of mind, then complexity science, and finally arrived at the nascent field of biosemiotics. At which point I then took a decade detour through cosmology and the possibility of pan-semiotic approaches to physical science generally. And right now, I'm sort of back to biology, completing the circle with biophysics and abiogenesis having really started to shift into top gear intellectually.

So you are right. Early on I accepted the argument that biology is bigger than physics, and that science's failure to deal with the problem of mind could be put down to a lack of a suitable organicist metaphysics.

But then it turns out that we didn't even understand life properly in the 1970s and 1980s. So it is revolution stacked on revolution. What could be more thrilling?

It wasn't about you being stubborn and close-minded and unable to paint with all the colors of the wind. It wasn't nature/machine but stasis/dynamism. Your model appears to paint the world as an unfurling dialectical play of flux and stasis which relation is intimately tied to potential/constraint (is that right?) But the model, however, can be reached once and forever. A model is something constructed, but once constructed it appears to be provide atemporal truths.

The other thing is you seem to get something out of reasserting its principles - in distilled terms -over and over again, in all sorts of diverse threads. It doesn't seem to be primarily for the benefit oreducation of others when you do it. Not most of the time anway. It's usually more eristic. What makes philosophy enjoyable and worthwhile, for me, is the uncertainty and periodic aha moments - but so having found the right answers, why still do it? You talk a lot about othering - and seem drawn to the act of othering other, less sophisticated otherings. As though - this is the insinuation - your model feeds on its difference from false models. and has to keep feeding.

Where I'm going is trying to understand how your model and its modellers (qua modellers) operate in the world it models.

Strikes me to be a feature of immanence.

When selection is transcendent, it's a form which makes selection, which sets the limit of the world or state--e.g. my rectangular screen is rectangular by the form of the rectangle. It's made rectangular by the form, as if from was actor which moulded the formless world.

With immanence though, form cannot be this defining actor. Since forms are expressed by existing states, rather than acting as their foundation, no form can make a selection. My screen is rectangle, but it cannot be the form of a rectangle selects that limit.

I'm only have a very casual familiarity with Deleuze, but here is seems like "eternal return" is used to fill the place form no longer can. It strikes me as sort of an absolute freedom, an infinite, distinct from all states and present regardless of form. I'm inclined to read it as sort of saying nothing-- no state of the world, no logical expression of form-- selects.

My rectangular monitor is and necessarily expresses the form of a rectangle. It's defined out of the world. From the moment this monitor was finished (i.e. existed in the sense we are talking about), it was rectangular. And it is necessarily rectangular until that state changes (e.g. it's smashed out of shape).

In this respect, I'd read "eternal return" quite literally here. Selection always returns. No matter what is (or is not) a difference is defined. Expression of form is necessary. I'd say it's almost a combination of the two you are asking about: that which selects (eternal return-- "nothing") and that selection is necessary.

I generally find your posts educational and also challenging, although as you know, I am sceptical of abiogenesis on philosophical grounds. (Incidentally I have found an interesting resource on biosemiosis, namely this http://www.biosemiosis.org/index.php/bibliography which you probably know about, or are even featured in.)

But I am extremely wary of Craig Venter and his ilk. On the one hand, science is a method, or the method, of exploration of the natural world, but when it comes to developing the techniques required to engineer or even manufacture living beings, it is close to 'playing God', carried out by people who really do believe that science is replacing religion as a path to the absolute.

However:

What secular reason is missing is self-awareness. It is “unenlightened about itself” in the sense that it has within itself no mechanism for questioning the products and conclusions of its formal, procedural entailments and experiments.

Stanley Fish, Does Reason Know what it is Missing?

Whereas the kind of approach I'm pursuing, is not actually trying to create an alternative or competing model, but to cultivate a different cognitive mode, or way-of-being. This requires, among other things, becoming internally aware of the limits of knowledge, not in the sense of a boundary, but of the limits symbolic knowledge and verbal knowledge - scientia itself. That endeavour is not hostile to science, but it is wary of the sense in which science has now assumed the mantle of 'arbiter of truth'. So it's sceptical about science whilst also being able to appreciate its vast utility,

//edit// pleased to have noticed Steve Talbott's Getting Over the Code Delusion on the above-mentioned bibliography.

Your model appears to paint the world as an unfurling dialectical play of flux and stasis which relation is intimately tied to potential/constraint (is that right?) But the model, however, can be reached once and forever. A model is something constructed, but once constructed it appears to be provide atemporal truths. — csalisbury

Your characterisation of my position is accurate enough here. But I don't see the problem.

Surely a model by definition is going to be an atemporal truth? The map is not the territory, and all that....

The other thing is you seem to get something out of reasserting its principles - in distilled terms -over and over again, in all sorts of diverse threads. — csalisbury

Again, where is the problem if what I am asserting is itself paradigmatic? My organicism is developed at a level that undercuts the familiar discursive norms. So it always finds itself encountering that which it must speak its objections to - the brute classical materialism of the analytic mind, and the dazed romanticism which is the continental reaction to analytical sternness.

What makes philosophy enjoyable and worthwhile, for me, is the uncertainty and periodic aha moments - but so having found the right answers, why still do it? — csalisbury

First, its fun. Second, its useful to expose something I now hold with such certainty to the most randomly varied kinds of response. If I talk with fellow semioticians, it's quite boring because everyone understands and agrees with the generalities. So it is useful to stand up in front of a tough and disbelieving crowd. I've got so lazy that I need that stimulus to be bothered enough to continue the attempt to refine my position.

So you would be wrong in thinking that I have arrived at some actual terminus. As I say, for me personally, biophysics is currently taking off semiotically in the same exciting way that dissipative structure theory was rattling along in the 2000s, or complexity theory was in the 1980s.

And even for the crystalline metaphysical nub, there are huge issues still to sort out. It may be the case that Peirce, Rosen, Pattee and Salthe (plus 100 others) are all blindly feeling the same elephant, but each of these has developed their own particular slant on the central machinery of organicism.

So they may be good on the hierarchy theory aspects, the modelling relation aspects, but they don't really bring out the dichotomy aspect, the symmetry breaking aspect. And famously they also don't have properly worked-out models of vagueness either.

Thus when I talk about the necessity of fully mathematical treatment, that is as much a goad to myself. It sets the target - a unitary description that is actually mathematically crystalline.

Hierarchy theory, non-linear dynamics, statistical mechanics, etc, are all mathematical enterprises. But to use the elephant analogy, that's still talking at the level of trunks, tails and legs. It is not yet a maths of pan-semiosis, a maths that captures the essential generative seed in fully abstract or universalising fashion.

And maybe, like all theories of everything, we can never get there. It's a mirage, an impossible dream. I'm perfectly willing to listen to and respond to rational arguments in that direction. But then in my own lifetime all I've seen is a rollercoaster of scientific thought heading in this direction.

I mean who knew before the 1970s that you could mathematise chaos? And its been one damn thing after another in that regard.

As though - this is the insinuation - your model feeds on its difference from false models. and has to keep feeding. — csalisbury

Another thing I've often said is that I don't in fact reject the classical reductionist paradigm. Pragmatically it works and is widely believed for very good reason.

So the actual situation is that reductionism (or mechanicalism) fits in as a necessary part of my organic whole. And indeed, that is precisely why semiotics is about mechanism - stuff like codes, switches, boundaries, memories, networks, hierachies, etc. Semiotics simply inverts the relationship where the "messy organic dynamics", the "vague apeiron", is what is ontically fundamental, and mechanism is emergent regulative structure or habit.

So my position is based on the proper othering of the mechanical - the one that incorporates machines into nature. And it thus opposes itself to the kind of mechanicalism that wants to pretend that nature just is some kind of machine.

That is why I am not strongly opposed to the enlightenment and its resulting machine-model of reality. Turn it around, invert it in proper fashion, and it slots right into the bosom of a properly mathematical and empirical organicism.

But romanticism and its philosophical offspring? Sorry, but that is simply a tale of muddled wrongness. It is false in fundamental ways.

So to deal with your insinuation, of course my argument is going to be that every crisply developed view must achieve that development by "feeding off" the matchingly definite image of its "other". That is simply being self-consistent - matching ontology with epistemology.

Now maybe one must manufacture that counter-image in some sense. Perhaps it dosn't really exist. And to the degree it doesn't really exist, then I would have a problem. It would reciprocally weaken the image I was hoping to sharply develop.

So I am happy to consider that possibility. Indeed, I am here doing just that. But then it is up to you to show that the anti-crystalline nub fails to exist in the normed discourses of, say, AP or Pomo. If my diagnosis is so faulty, you can point to the faults.

When it comes to Contiinental philosophy, you may even have a point in arguing it can never be pinned down in the way I require because it is explicitly post-structure! Anything goes. There is no core to defend.

But that is to miss my criticism. To the degree that continentalism fails to be explicitly romantic, my argument is that it is being quite deliberately - that is crisply - vague.

Just open up any PoMo text at random. You get all these very definite seeming words, sentences, jargon, patterns of textual reference. It certainly looks crisp - an attempt to pin down ideas. But really you are dealing with a formless chaos, a dissonant noise, that folk with furrowed brows form a tight tribal circle around and make respectful murmurings. Genius is that which no one could understand.

Whoops, the accusation of romanticism is back in the frame again. How eristic of me. ;)