Heidegger is one of those valuable philosophers who destabilize our complacent sense that we know what we are talking about when we babble on about being and logic and truth quasimechanically. — green flag

I see and accept the truth of what you say above. I don't oppose Heidegger; that fresh thinking requires neologisms is also something I accept without complaint.

However, if someone pushes beyond the scope of the common grammar, they should be at pains to surround the new expression with an explanatory text that clarifies the new meaning.

A blunt declaration to the effect: "existence is not a predicate" stops short of doing the work of necessary persuasion from conventional wisdom to new understanding. On the other hand, legitimate participation in this conversation presupposes adequate grounding in the pertinent fundamentals. It now seems apparent my grounding is deficient.

existence is not a predicate — green flag

Since the above clause has "existence" functioning as a noun, the meaning conveyed is true but trivial.

If we say, "I am existing." is a false statement per the true nature of existence, then we're facing the need to work out the meaning of existence outside of subject-predicate grammar. Even so, saying, "I am existing." can scarcely be denied by anyone, including Heidegger.

Do Heidegger's neo-logismic contortions -- such as this one -- really connect to statements understood to be logical?

What are the attributes of everything that is that they have in common? — Fooloso4

Everything that is possesses the common attribute of being-ness.

To deny that being-ness populates a set is, in my opinion, to deny a promising attack on the knarly issue of Origin Boundary Ontology. Maybe, somehow, the insuperability of being-ness-the-set gets us out of the infinite-regress puzzle. To elaborate a bit, this problem involves the perplexity of quantum leaping from the analytical to the axiomatic.

'existence is not a predicate' — green flag

'existence is not a predicate' = '"is existing" is not a predicate'?

You introduced attributes, I don't think they have a place. — Fooloso4

If Sein und Zeit is an investigation of being and if

at·trib·ute
noun | ˈatrəˌbyo͞ot |
1 a quality or feature regarded as a characteristic or inherent part of someone or something: flexibility and mobility are the key attributes of our army.

is a definition pertinent to Heidegger's objective, then I need help understanding how attributes gathering members into a super-ordinating set is irrelevant to investigation of being or, for that matter, to any other generalizable attribute.

If not, then I think you need to explain why the use of set theory is not an appropriate tool of interpretation for endeavoring to understand Heidegger. — ucarr

I already did. — Fooloso4

I understand you're making a distinction between identity and equivalence, and that you think Heidegger concerned with the latter.

By applying the concept of set to Dasein, I conclude from Sein und Zeit that being is an insuperable medium.

I do not think it helpful to look at this in terms of sets and axioms. — Fooloso4

This is a claim. Where's your supporting argument? I think you need to cite quotations from Heidegger that invalidate the method that lead to my conclusion or, in lieu of quotations, your own inferences drawn from Heidegger that effect the invalidation.

what I was getting at (and it's not so easy) is what is meant by saying that something is ?

I mean what is that person trying to say ? — green flag

Ah! I now understand you better.

At the risk of being tiresome, I feel like I want to repeat the statement you quoted. I say this because my approach to elucidating what is meant by saying something is necessarily entails a sentient self detecting another existence via the complex inter-weave of the object-subject duality.

As we all know, the object-subject duality deserves its own encyclopedia for expression of a narrative resembling an exhaustive examination.

Getting back to Heidegger, I think the object-subject entanglement is the motivator for his being-in-the world with other beings ready-to-hand theme. From this center we get his proto-existentialist theme: authenticity and his extensions-of-human technology theme.

Being as insuperable medium with resultant entanglement of individualized beings is a good pivot into investigation of general being-ness.

Proceeding from the premise that anything – beings included – can be a member of a set — ucarr

The point is that this is not what Heidegger is investigating. — Fooloso4

Okay. That's an appropriate restriction for me to obey.

Being is not an common attribute of things that are. It is tautological to say that what all things that are have in common is that they are. — Fooloso4

When you make claims, as above, are you not straying from what Heidegger is investigating?

If not, then I think you need to explain why the use of set theory is not an appropriate tool of interpretation for endeavoring to understand Heidegger. I further think that such an explanation should expose how, more generally, set theory is not applicable to terms such as being-in-general.

What does it mean to say that something exists ? that something is ? — green flag

Firstly, it entails the existential fact of my existence and, moreover, it entails my acknowledgement of my own existence.

Existence of things is an essential and abiding issue for the self.

I think in making our examination of Nietzsche and Heidegger, we are investigating, along with other things, whether or not being is an insuperable medium.

How can "beings" as signifier have meaning if it doesn't signify common attributes of things, thereby gathering these things together into a set? — ucarr

Being is not an common attribute of things that are. It is tautological to say that what all things that are have in common is that they are. — Fooloso4

Although a tautology does not advance the narrative of discovery, that doesn't mean it's false.

To say, “all things that are have in common that they are” is an analytically true statement. As yet, I’m not aware of why it’s not also an existentially true statement.

I make this trivial argument because it leads into a more serious examination:

I do not think it helpful to look at this in terms of sets and axioms. — Fooloso4

Proceeding from the premise that anything – beings included – can be a member of a set, the claim that

Beings are not members of a set "Being". — Fooloso4

motivates me to investigate the volume of its truth content. Speaking in generality, I think a sound observation can be made to the effect of saying, “All sets exemplify beings being members of a set, including even the empty set.”

The upshot of the above claim is that being is an insuperable medium, even with regard to nothingness.

From here I’m contemplating advancing to the claim, “There is not nothing because there cannot be nothing.”*

*Language, as demonstrated above by the infinitive “to be,” doesn’t allow me to articulate authentic nothingness.

extrapolation from members of a set to an axiom of the set? — ucarr

Beings are not members of a set "Being". — Fooloso4

How can "beings" as signifier have meaning if it doesn't signify common attributes of things, thereby gathering these things together into a set?

The question of Being proceeds by way of beings - "the Being of beings". — Fooloso4

Answering this question leads to: extrapolation from members of a set to an axiom of the set?

thinking Being as Time — Heidegger, Lectures on Nietzsche, Vol 1, page 20e

is not to think of Being as something in time. — Fooloso4

Being is a blood brother to moebius-strip_time-loop?

Time alone penetrates presence, albeit reflexively towards the complex surface of Sein und Zeit? (The complex surface of Sein und Zeit ⇒ Arthur C. Clarke’s obelisk?) Sein und Zeit is the gravity well that sources our phenomenal-empirical universe and answers the question: Why is there not nothing? with Why there is not nothing?

The will to power and the eternal return are not beings... — Fooloso4

Genesis and the moebius-strip_time-loop are not beings but, instead, metaphysical mediums?

...but that through which and by which what comes to be comes to be. — Fooloso4

Temporality is an essential medium of dimensional extension.

Reflexivity is an essential medium of presence_consciousness (as contrasted with position_existence)?

Does the guiding question not imply a search for the essence of being? — ucarr

The grounding question is not about any particular being or all beings, it is about Being, the wonder that there is anything at all. — Fooloso4

This is clear. Now I understand the distinction.

Nietzsche thinks and meditates on Being, that is, on will to power as eternal recurrence. What does that mean, taken quite broadly and essentially? Eternity, not as a static "now," nor as a sequence of "nows" rolling off into the infinite, but as the "now" that bends back into itself: what is that if not the concealed essence of Time? Thinking Being, will to power, as eternal return, thinking the most difficult thought of philosophy, means thinking Being as Time. — Heidegger, Lectures on Nietzsche, Vol 1, page 20e

Thanks for supplying this quote; it increases my interest in Nietzsche and Heidegger.

Curiously, I'm catching a hint of conflation of a particular being or all beings with Being.

My evidence is the above Heidegger quote. Paraphrasing him, he says: Nietzsche thinks and meditates on Being, that is, on will to power as eternal recurrence. So, by my understanding, Being as will to power as eternal recurrence = the now that bends back into itself.

To me this sounds like a description of a being, a reflexive being. And, moreover, this particular being is time.

The guiding question of metaphysics, “what is being?” has reached its end with Nietzsche. — Wikipedia

The genuinely grounding question, as the question of the essence of Being, does not unfold in the history of philosophy as such... — Wikipedia

...we call the question "What is being?" the guiding question, in contrast to the more original question which sustains and directs the guiding question. The more original question
we call the grounding question. — Wikipedia

Does the guiding question not imply a search for the essence of being? I don't suppose anyone thinks it seeks after the surface or periphery of being.

Then, how does the majority determine those that are so genius we cannot understand their vision for the future/innovation/invention and those that are spouting mere non-useful nonsense. — Benj96

Even if the standard of objective truth is fundamentally flawed, it can prove useful in determining the category to which a particular theorist belongs.

I think it's usually the case that theories that describe real phenomena and actual states of being of the objective world make themselves known to more than one observer-thinker.

Truth-bearing theories tend to add new and pivotal information to the known body of accumulating information and understanding pertaining to a particular inquiry or discipline.

Other theorists working in the same field, possessing a database of information pertinent to the new theory, likely will quickly perceive said pertinence and start adopting-accommodating the new theory to the accumulating database.

I conjecture much of the discovery of humanity is communal.

If an individual theorist discovers a major joint, viz., turning point in an evolving understanding of something, and thus opens a new and essential chapter within the over-arching theory, then that person, having instigated a quantum leap forward in the evolution of the theory, likely will be saluted as a stand-out pioneering genius as for example, Einstein with his Theory of Relativity. Even in his case, however, it's a well-known fact that Riemann's geometrization of gravitation laid a theoretical foundation essential to Relativity.

In the case of a delusional theorist, lacking the experimental verification establishing correspondence between abstract theory and empirical experience, his-her postulations will remain private and unverifiable. Society, having no access to empirical experience of such theoretical claims, will likely dismiss them as ranting nonsense.

I think the agent intellect has a form/actuality... — Dfpolis

Is this form a logical entity emergent from the neuronal processes of the brain? — ucarr

Its ontological status is not logical (it really operates), nor is it an independent being. It is a power of a rational being. — Dfpolis

Please elaborate the essential details of the context, viz., the environment in which agent intellect is present and active. — ucarr

Philosophically, I can only say that what the agent intellect does cannot be deduced from physical considerations. So, it is ontologically emergent. When we cannot work out the dynamics, saying"from x" could be no more than a guess. — Dfpolis

***********************************************************************************************************************************

Consider: Intelligibility perceived by agent intellect = comprehension

Intelligibility has existence independent of the perception and comprehension of agent intellect?

Asking this another way, when a tree falls in the forest sans observer, is this event nonetheless an intelligible phenomenon?

Asking it obversely, does intelligibility propagate only in direct connection to the comprehension of the agent intellect (of the sentient being)?

Attacking from yet another angle: Does intelligibility persist in the absence of sentience?

Consider: Intelligibility ≡ Order

The above statement is true?

Obversely, does non-teleological evolution preclude all linkage between intelligibility and order?

Can there be unintelligible order?

If not, must we conclude there can be no non-teleological evolution?

If so, must we conclude mind takes the sensory input of the proto-order of the objective world and converts it into the following block chain: intelligibility_perception_memory-processing-comprehension_self

***********************************************************************************************************************************

I think the agent intellect has a form/actuality... — Dfpolis

Its ontological status is not logical (it really operates), nor is it an independent being. It is a power of a rational being. — Dfpolis

Using the above statements, can I deduce agent intellect is ontologically present and active within the mind of humans?

Moreover, can I conclude agent intellect lies somewhere between hard dualism at one end and hard reduction at the other end?

Does agent intellect as self possess form? — ucarr

I think the agent intellect has a form/actuality... — Dfpolis

Is this form a logical entity emergent from the neuronal processes of the brain?

Does awareness possess boundaries? — ucarr

Boundaries? That is a hard question. Normally the AI is directed to contents encoded in our brain, but in mystical experience it seems to have some awareness of God, at least in His agency. (This is a very complex subject. A good start, but only a start, is the phenomenology discussed by Bucke, James and especially W. T. Stace.) — Dfpolis

If agent intellect emerges from neuronal activity, then its ontic status, rather than metaphorical, is logical?

Logical emergence is one type of category, neuronal grounding of same is another type of category? If so, how does one type of category transduce to the other type?

Aristotle’s definition explains neither the genesis nor the dynamics of consciousness... — Dfpolis

Are you looking to current philosophical inquiry for answers to these questions?

time does not flow, because it does not exist independently of being measured. What flows is the sequence of events that change produces, and that we use to produce a time measure number. — Dfpolis

Somebody -- Was it Aristotle? -- talked about the essential importance of metaphor in the exercise of human intelligence.

I, being lazy, use "time" to signify: What flows is the sequence of events that change produces....

Getting fancy, let me add that,

syn·ec·do·che | səˈnekdəkē |
noun
a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa, as in Cleveland won by six runs (meaning “Cleveland's baseball team”).

Time, therefore, elides the multi-forms of creation into a universal oneness of blissful wholeness. — ucarr

Where do you buy your weed? A blessed product. — jgill

In the olden days (my childhood), when we had milkmen and they delivered milk in glass bottles to our door, sometimes a bottle would lie burst on its side. Dad, looking at the bottle, would say, "Another loss from water turning into ice."

Did you not learn to navigate sequences of events in this manner?

Gravity and acceleration-due-to-gravity are, in a certain sense, as one. They are conjoined as a unified concept: gravity-and-acceleration. Thus cause and effect are, in the same sense, as one, save one stipulation: temporal sequencing. — ucarr

I see one inconsistency and one redundancy in this argumentation:
First, there's a circularity: You take two different things, a cause and an effect, and assume that they are one thing --in a sense, or whatever. Then you conclude that cause and effect are the same, well, also in a sense.
Then you introduce the element of timing ("temporal sequencing") that refutes the above statement and which doesn't actually change anything; it's only another reason why the first statement is invalid, since cause precedes effect. Which can be also considered as a tautology. — Alkis Piskas

Is it maybe the argumentation --as a whole-- not properly worded or constructed? — Alkis Piskas

Your analysis is correct. What I'm trying to do has to be processed through the channel of truth. Think of a plumb line and how it's used to keep a building vertical all the way to its apex. If the plumb line holds to the datum at the base of the structure, we say it's true.

In our phenomenal world of everyday experience, we couldn't well navigate constant potential sensory overload if our pattern recognition of cause-and-effect didn't phrase-up to a unified concept wherein the plumb line from a to b holds true.

A and b holding true to each other is a tautology, except that we have the complication that a and b don't look like each other. That's the mysterious time element. Dispelling the seeming difference of a and b is, however, the adventure of life. We make our journeys in search of truth and, if successful, we confirm that a is really b and vice versa. The seeming endless variety of creation boils down to the ohmm of oneness the ascended spiritualists keep exposing to us.

Time, therefore, elides the multi-forms of creation into a universal oneness of blissful wholeness.

The fall from grace is the smashing up of wholeness into pieces; humans, however, cannot be happy without the adventure of reconstruction

Time, beyond water, holds top rank as the universal solvent: with enough time, drops of water pound coal into diamond.

If time is flowing, that is moving relative to different states of the universe, then it must be doing so over some sort of second time dimension. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Does your statement above describe a situation containing two temporal progressions: a) different states of the universe; the differentials separating the states of the universe being one set of a type of time; b) time moving relative to the first set of time being the second set of a type of time?

Second, under special relativity, the order in which events occur can be different for different observers. This makes it unclear as to how any time flow could occur. — Count Timothy von Icarus

At the risk of being convoluted and opaque, "order in which events occur can be different for different observers" exemplifies time eliding even itself: that the ordering of events into a timeline is relative to the inertial frame of reference of the observer and thus there is no universal time: time penetrates its ordering of events in one locality with a different ordering of the same events in another locality.

Time is essential to location in that the structure of a location is not a separate thing apart from material things populating said location; a location is itself a material thing: spacetime. Spacetime is entangled with the material objects that seem to populate it. Entanglement ⇒ time_gravitation.

Now we come to a big question: the boundaries of consciousness: How do time and gravitation negotiate the boundaries of consciousness? Lying center to this question is how do time and gravitation negotiate recursion? Suffice it to say the result of this negotiation is the axiom.

If you propagate an infinite number of successive executions of a computational function you get as a resultant a mathematical axiom.

Time plays an essential role in negotiating recursion en route to axiomatic truth. Expressed in phenomenal terms, this is time penetrating the boundaries of consciousness.*

Aristotle's agent-intellect is propagated by recursion negotiated by time to time-approaching-time-zero. This is also dimensional expansion, viz., propagation of existence instantiated in material objects.

*What are the boundaries of consciousness? One of the boundaries of consciousness is infinite computational recursion en route to time negotiating time-approaching-time-zero. This is echo feedback looping in route to consciousness.

:up:

I just find it a massive tease to be granted existence and yet only experience it for a brief spell. — invicta

My son, you make Tevye proud! — ucarr

Essentially my actions and life and all my accomplishments being reduced to nothing. — invicta

Beware Albert Camu! — ucarr

The eternal is unchanging. — Count Timothy von Icarus

What makes you an expert on the eternal to make such a blanket statement. I have no idea myself perhaps you could elaborate? — invicta

Do you have a clear idea in your mind what the eternal is ? Perhaps tell us before making statements such as these on it. — invicta

In a cave one parsec from Sol, some writing on the wall was discovered: from the secret pages of a classified document: It's the critic's job to hoist intelligent complaints inside the heart of paradise; Where would Eden be without designs of the serpent; deity is m.c. to a conflict-driven, cosmic entertainment: human.

Deity: "Alright now, invicta. As the winner of our vocal-sparring-for spite-contest, you're given choice of eternal life. Say "yes" and it's yours. The offer, however, does come with conditions. You must agree to one of two choices: a) become chief literary critic for a tony New York-based magazine or b) become maven of a Washington-based gossip column rivaling the caustic bitchery of Hoover. And your choice is?"

I would caution against any model where time "flows." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Can you elaborate? Can you give me a link to an article that elaborates?

Thanks for the link. :up:

:up:

Nikos Kazantzakis --a giant of the Greek literature-- had been excommunicated by the Greek Orthodox Church because he was a declared atheist. Yet, he was a very ethical person and if one knows well his works, one could say that he was a very religious person. — Alkis Piskas

Boy, do I love his novel, The Last Temptation of Christ.

What you have to say is too muddled to have any reverberation. — Banno

Thanks for the weigh-in. Dialogue is divine, even when it's not.

You think my thinking untidy.

The hard trick in slinking behind low expectations: maintaining enough public interest to avoid wholesale dismissal. Invective trumps silence, especially when it's instructive.

Against obverse inclination, you've been doing your job of examination: unselfish.

Hostile interest is intriguing because -- I'm off topic...

Back to chasing reverberation. Goal: sustain your pithy judgments.

I guess I give up, having not been able to follow what it is you might be claiming. — Banno

My central mission in this conversation is to define time in terms of boundaries and their inter-relationships.

My central premise is that time is a type of general boundary modulator; perhaps it is the general boundary modulator.

For an example of what I mean, consider: once you were a boy in single digits; now you are a man in double digits. How did this change happen? Typically, we say, "Time passed and you, making your various rights of passage: birth, first steps, first words, first date, graduation, first job, marriage and etc., moved on, growing older."

Well, do you think these rights of passage are moving you along through one boundary after another? Do you think passage through all of these boundaries has been actuated -- maybe I should rather say, facilitated -- by time?

Below are my continuing efforts to understand some important parts of your article:

Replicability is a type, rather than a token, property. We can never replicate a token observation, only the same type of observation. — Dfpolis

Thus, the consciousness impasse is a representational, not an ontological, issue. — Dfpolis

The consciousness impasse, the root of The Hard Problem, is a conflation of type replicability with token replicability, the latter being an impossibility.

Since humans are psychophysical organisms who perceive to know and conceptualize to act, physicality and intentionality are dynamically integrated. — Dfpolis

The above claim posits conceptualize and intend within an equation. Moreover, it implies the integral-holism of rational action. Sentient beings acting rationally are never bi-furcated across the partition of conceptual dualism. Objectivist-Physicalist science breaks the natural coherence linking sentient beings to creation. The Hard Problem is thus a problem of scientific methodology.

Ignoring this seamless unity, post-Cartesian thought conceives them separately – creating representational problems. The Hard Problem and the mind-body problem both arose in the post-Cartesian era, and precisely because of conceptual dualism. To resolve them, we need only drop the Fundamental Abstraction in studying mind. — Dfpolis

Descartes, acting the part of the villain (albeit unintentionally), spurred conceptual dualism: a categorical partitioning of mind and body; Polis, for remedy, argues the return to Aristotelian integralism-holism with respect to physicality-intentionality.

This tells us Aristotle’s agent intellect is the sin qua non component of Polis’ proffered solution to The Hard Problem.

The agent intellect is the self who does introspection: pattern recognition in response to present intelligibility; logical manipulation of information: deduction; inference; interpolation; extrapolation; inferential expansion; information combinatorics, etc.

Matter and form are logically distinguishable, but physically inseparable, aspects of bodies – another one-to-many mapping from the physical to the intentional. — Dfpolis

Key Questions -- Aristotelian awareness contains a physical component: Does agent intellect = self? Does agent intellect as self possess form? Does awareness possess boundaries?

For Aristotle, form and matter are not things, but the foundations for two modes of conceptualization. — Dfpolis

Form and matter are two modes of organization, viz., matter = extension/extendability; form = context/configurability.

Thus, the concept <apple> is not a thing, but an activity, viz. the actualization of an apple representation’s intelligibility. — Dfpolis

Herein activity = physical-intentional complex, viz., present intelligibility ⇔ sentience.

The essence of representation is the potential to be understood. — Dfpolis

Representation = present intelligibility.

Dualism is incompatible with the identity of physically encoded information informing the intellect and the intellect being informed by physically encoded information. — Dfpolis

Sensible-object_sense-organ complex: a swirling yin-yang of integral_holism; no discrete bifurcation.

An agent intellect is necessary because we actually understand what is only represented in brain states. Since neural processing cannot effect awareness, an extra element is required, as Aristotle argued and Chalmers seconds. — Dfpolis

Does the sensible-object_sense-organ complex generate Aristotle’s phantasm?> Yes, however, like a computer; it processes data, but there’s no self who comprehends what it’s doing; there’s no self who comprehends the present intelligibility of the data.

Key Question -- What happens if:

Abstraction is the selective actualization of intelligibility. — Dfpolis

becomes:

Abstraction is the reductive actualization of intelligibility. — ucarr edit

This question is based on my supposition (as influenced by your claim re: replicability) abstraction can only be of type and never of token; replication of token, by virtue of its definition, must always be an identity and thus cannot be an abstraction. An idea can never hold identity with a thing-in-itself. As, per Aristotle:

‘For the sense-organ is in every case receptive of the sensible object without its matter’ — Aristotle

The sense organ takes in the attributes of a sensible thing (form), but not its hyle (potential). It is the potential of a thing-in-itself to map to myriad configurations -- all of them individual instantiations of existence -- that abstraction to the logical cannot emulate.

Key question – Is abstraction, a subtractive process, necessarily a reductive process?

Key question – Can agent intellect generate anything other than abstractions?*

*Consider the inevitable sensory overload from blooming creation sans abstraction.

The Hard Problem of consciousness signals the need for a paradigm shift. — Dfpolis

The physical-conceptual complex of Aristotelian animism is a corrective reversionist paradigm. However, this reversionism is not retrograde because it meshes cleanly and closely with much of scientific understanding evolving henceforth from antiquity.

So for example, someone in another thread suggested to me that we could model an atom as a system. However, the natural state of atoms is to exist within complex molecules, where parts (electrons for example) are shared. If two atoms share an electron, and the atoms themselves are being modeled as distinct systems, then in each model, the shared atom is both an internal part of the inertial continuity of the system, and also a part of the other system, thereby acting as a causal force of change on that same system. In other words, from this 'systems' perspective, the electron must be understood as both a part of the inertial continuity of the system, and a causal force of change to the system (being a part of an external system), at the same time. — Metaphysician Undercover

I think the arbitrary nature of system boundaries is akin to other problems in the sciences and even humanities. For example, in semiotic analysis/communications, a physical entity, say a group of neurons, might act as object, symbol, and interpretant during the process, depending on the level of analysis that is used. But at a certain part, the ability of any one component to convey aspects of the total message breaks down. E.g., a single logic gate can't hold the number "8," itself. Certain relationships only exist at higher levels of emergence, like your example of shared electrons. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Your above quotes for me are introductions to detailed examinations of topics in physics, each of which, in the elaboration of specialization, would easily engage the entire careers of physicist-specialists.

My label of convenience for the theme connecting and focusing pertinent issues within Time and Boundaries is Boundary Ontology. Under this category the focus is on such questions as: How do we measure the surface of a material object? In the scale of human experience, this question is perhaps mundane. Is that the case at the scale of the elementary particles? How about the scale of the expanding universe? What does it mean for spacetime to expand and yet have no outer boundary?

Speaking mathematically, clearly topology has a key role to play herein. For example: topology might offer a rational approach to a definition of the soul: a surface invariant to unlimited manifolding of a set.

Is system the limit of entropic expansion? Is universe the limit of system? These are, I think, important boundary ontology questions.

Is there a possible general mathematical definition of what constitutes the boundary of a system?

Can boundaries be defined for cognitive inter-relations, thereby establishing a hybrid interweaving the cognitive_physical?

Finally, there's the supreme challenge of the sine qua non of boundary ontology puzzles: Origin Boundary Ontology. First principle, first cause, etc, will need more than three spatial dimensions + time for practical elaboration.

I still don't see what your musings, ucarr, have to with philosophy. What's the philosophical itch you're trying to get us to scratch? State it plainly. — 180 Proof

Have your seen my quote directly above yours?

Do you think the forward-flowing of history comprises the physical phenomena populating our empirical experiences? — ucarr

"Forward-flowing" is a cognitive illusion and intuitive way of talking about asymmetric change. "History" represents time-as-past-tense-narrative (i.e. a ghost story). Particle physicists refer to worldlines (or many-worlds branchings) and statistical mechanics refer to entropy gradients. — 180 Proof

I take your above quote for an answer to my question above it.

No doubt my appointment with the dentist tomorrow, when seen as asymmetric change representing time-as-past-tense-narrative (i.e. a ghost story) with reference to world lines (or many-worlds branchings) and statistical mechanics referring to entropy gradients, holds formally very little in common with my vision of getting a filling in my back molar. No. I haven't entered such descriptions into my daily planner.

Having said that, I think I understand your cutting-edge scientific vision of forward movement is pertinent to the concepts and details of my narrative. If I'm right, then you exaggerate when claiming "It's clear as mud to me."

(I model mathematical causal chains as compositions of functions. A result (effect) at a time t is, say, z. The next temporal step is to compute s, where s=f(z), then after that, r, where r= g(s), and so on. There's a whole theory herein. But I think it more realistic to assume several functions act on z, not just one. Like differing forces. So each step - and these are associated with intervals of time - has as outcome the influence of a number of "forces", rather than a single function.) — jgill

In the above quote, jgill elaborates with detail and clarity what I've been trying to claim more vaguely and superficially. The above quote gives us a description of phenomenal reality, known empirically to all of us. It is a complex mix of the physical and the conceptual. Cause and effect and time are deeply partial to each other as an interweave, and this interweave has for its signature the forward-flowing of history.

I model mathematical causal chains as compositions of functions. — jgill

The gist of my claim herein is that the above quote describes our fluidly transforming world as an ongoing continuity of boundary crossings, boundary mergers, Venn Diagram overlapping and transcendence of boundaries.

Time and its signature, the forward-flowing of history, will bleed through anything, whether physical or conceptual: the drop of water, in time, bores through the great stone; the black hole, in time, evaporates, releasing phenomena only seemingly lost forever.

..."time" is neither "temporal" nor a "phenomenon". (I think you're confusing (your) maps with the territory.) — 180 Proof

What’s the critical operation between cause and effect when considered as conjunction: time?'' — ucarr

No. IMO, wrong, or incoherent, question (i.e. misuse of terms). — 180 Proof

Are there any observable boundaries time cannot merge? — ucarr

More incoherence. "Time" is a metric (i.e. parameter), ucarr, not a force or agent. — 180 Proof

Do you think the forward-flowing of history comprises the physical phenomena populating our empirical
experiences?

In the below quote, are you referring to the commingling of the forward-flowing of history with the metric that tracks it mathematically?

(I think you're confusing (your) maps with the territory.) — 180 Proof

Saying gravity causes acceleration is just saying the acceleration between two masses causes the acceleration between two masses. — Banno

Is it a stretch, a distortion, a mis-read to say your above quote is affirmation of my main point?

Gravity causes acceleration (in free fall) ⇒ acceleration of mass ≡ gravity as $g = 9.8/s^2$, or $f = ma$.

My Main Point

Gravity and acceleration-due-to-gravity are, in a certain sense, as one. They are conjoined as a unified concept: gravity-and-acceleration. Thus cause and effect are, in the same sense, as one, save one stipulation: temporal sequencing. — ucarr

Gravity is just a name for the acceleration of any two masses towards each other. — Banno

Are you talking about gravitational attraction?

$g = 9.8 m/s ^2$ You hold this equation in contempt?

What’s causing precise acceleration? — ucarr

Respective masses curving spacetime. — 180 Proof

Is this the language you respect?

I would caution against any model where time "flows." — Count Timothy von Icarus

You imply time is a metric: a standard of measurement?

Time is the dimension in which change occurs. Without
time change is meaningless. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Change specified as boundary crossings, boundary mergers, Venn Diagram overlapping and transcendence of boundaries is what interests me and what motivated my OP.

Time is the dimension in which change occurs. Without time change is meaningless. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Are you making reference to spacetime?

Some philosophers have bitten the bullet and accepted either the non-existence of time, change, and motion based on this problem, or infinitely regressing time dimensions, but there is actually no need to do this. I would recommend R.T.W. Arthur's "The Reality of Time Flow - Local Becoming in Modern Physics," on this point. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Thanks for the book reference.

Becoming suggests crossing a threshold. Is this a topic of the book?

But then the temporal aspect is there, but the thing is contrived. — unenlightened

Okay. I understand you to be making a comparison. You're telling me the concept of interaction hews to more naturally occurring situations; the concept of before and after hews to more contrived situations.

I don't know what atemporal cause and effect would be. — unenlightened

So the quote below is not your intended example of an atemporal cause and effect?

An interaction changes two things at once - an atom absorbs a photon and its energy is increased. one does not wish to say that the photon caused the increase in energy more so than the atom caused the absorption of the photon - it is a single event - a single interaction, and the observation thereof is another interaction. — unenlightened

Below are my efforts to understand some important parts of your article:

Premises

…consciousness emerges in a specific kind of interaction: that between a rational subject and present intelligibility. — Dfpolis

The agent intellect is the mediator between a rational subject and present intelligibility. — ucarr-paraphrase

A neural network instantiates order and thus intelligibility; the agent intellect is necessary to effect comprehension of present intelligibility by the act of reading and comprehending it. This is the action of consciousness. — ucarr-paraphrase

Since consciousness does not actualize a physical possibility, it is ontologically emergent. — Dfpolis

Questions

A neural network is first-order organization whereas consciousness is second-order organization?

Since consciousness is an interweave of the physical and the inter-relational, consciousness is, ontologically speaking, a hybrid of the two under rubric of Aristotelianism?

Is the agent intellect a synonym of the self; does the agent intellect possess matter and form?

Maybe I'm just missing the point of your post, ucarr. — 180 Proof

Do you find the general structure of the OP too muddled to allow discernment of a central theme?

Do you find my prose sometimes waxing poetic at the expense of scientific and logical merit?

Do you think my notion of time's relationship to unfolding history fatally flawed?