Life exists because there is something special in terms of the physics of the nanoscale quasi-classical “convergence zone” where semiotics can take root. — apokrisis

I actually did read it. I think I understand the importance of the 'junction' (basically free to ride.)

Dissipative structure just wants to be. Evolvability evolved as a consequence of that telos. — apokrisis

Is the second law basically mathematical ? Something like the law of large numbers ? Is it basically the fact that there are more states that we call disordered than there are ordered states --- so that any change of state is likely to be toward disorder ?

How does one grasp this telos best ?

the analysis and evaluation of the contemporary intellectual-historical situation is integral to philosophy—all the more so if philosophy self-reflexively grasps its ineluctably historical nature — plaque flag

The young philosopher is always already thrown into a set of famous philosophers and their approaches, their pet themes and concepts --- and these influences were themselves thrown in the same way, so that the whole sequence is temporally cumulative and continuous, a smooth but curving torchlit path in some vast space left mostly dark, habitat of unchosen lifeworlds.

The entire given psycho-physical reality is not something that is, but something that lives: that is the germ cell of historicity. And self-reflection, which is directed not at an abstract I, but the entirety of my own self, will find that I am historically determined, just as physics grasps me as determined by the cosmos. Just as I am nature, I am history. And in this decisive sense we have to understand Goethe's dictum of [our] having lived [Gelebthaben] for at least three thousand years. — plaque flag

In other words, we are not a thing like a rock or even a honey-badger but instead a living concentration or accumulation of three thousand years of research and development, and that's just the software, the compacted-transmitted training, the human dance after centuries of improvisation within the constraints of what had already happened up to that point. I do not see the world through universal timeless eyes (with eternal platonic concepts) but through historical eyes (with evolved and 'liquid' concepts). We take a compatible (thrown) place within the social construction performance of reality. This is not to deny that physics reveals a relatively solid and unchanging core, but Nature is a product of (part of ) Spirit. In other words, physics is part of that performance, methodically reducing 'rich time' to 'clock time,' a succession of equally meaningless nows. A system of dead predictable stuff is a powerful tool.

Making a case for the trip from Hegel to Heidegger in terms of form-of-life, Geist, das Man (a generation) :

Yorck emphasizes the “virtuality” or “effectivity” of history, i.e., the cumulative effects and results of individual persons exerting power and influence in transmitting the possibility and conception of life to their descendants. — plaque flag

from Hegel :

The mutations which history presents have been long characterised in the general, as an advance to something better, more perfect. The changes that take place in Nature — how infinitely manifold soever they may be — exhibit only a perpetually self-repeating cycle; in Nature there happens “nothing new under the sun,” and the multiform play of its phenomena so far induces a feeling of ennui; only in those changes which take place in the region of Spirit does anything new arise. This peculiarity in the world of mind has indicated in the case of man an altogether different destiny from that of merely natural objects ... namely, a real capacity for change, and that for the, better, — an impulse of perfectibility.
...
Universal history — as already demonstrated — shows the development of the consciousness of Freedom on the part of Spirit, and of the consequent realisation of that Freedom. This development implies a gradation — a series of increasingly adequate expressions or manifestations of Freedom, which result from its Idea. The logical, and — as still more prominent — the dialectical nature of the Idea in general, viz. that it is self-determined — that it assumes successive forms which it successively transcends; and by this very process of transcending its earlier stages, gains an affirmative, and, in fact, a richer and more concrete shape; — this necessity of its nature, and the necessary series of pure abstract forms which the Idea successively assumes — is exhibited in the department of Logic. Here we need adopt only one of its results, viz. that every step in the process, as differing from any other, has its determinate peculiar principle. In history this principle is idiosyncrasy of Spirit — peculiar National Genius. It is within the limitations of this idiosyncrasy that the spirit of the nation, concretely manifested, expresses every aspect of its consciousness and will — the whole cycle of its realisation. Its religion, its polity, its ethics, its legislation, and even its science, art, and mechanical skill, all bear its stamp.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hi/history5.htm#iii

Lingering covid brain fog and chronic fatique – I do what I can. — 180 Proof

I hope you feel better soon. I was punched by a bad case in the early days, two weeks watching Twin Peaks.

really like the start of that lecture, I'll find the time for it later. — Wayfarer

:up: .

:up:
Thanks for the recommendation, and I hope you do get around to writing more.

the tendency to deprecate reason as simply an evolved capacity is an indicator of a kind of deep irrationality. — Wayfarer

Seems harsh !

Trying to explain how reasonable creatures emerged in the first place from simpler conditions is perhaps the most spectacular use of reason so far. Reason is honored in the use of it.

Deciding that 'X did it', with X being more complex and mysterious than ourselves, is moving in the wrong direction. It is even perhaps anti-explanation. Or, more generously, it's an emotionally orienting myth.

So it seems very easy to create a unique but meaningful sentence. — Andrew4Handel

:up:

Yes. The point is that the building blocks of such sentences are relatively stable.

I think what someone means to say is contextual and will derive meaning from their intentions as well. — Andrew4Handel

Strictly spreaking, I wouldn't include intentions inasmuch as they are hidden. Context and gesture and everything manifest would count though, in my opinion.

It's not a big deal, but I like to focus on meaning as between people.

ROBERT BRANDOM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGyuCt18aPM

A great systematic philosopher working today...making deeper sense of Kant and Hegel...helping us know ourselves as rational beings....clear as rainwater for those with the patience to extend their vocabulary a little bit...

I feel like you have to be the arbiter of what you mean because how else can you decide what to say and know what you mean and want to convey? — Andrew4Handel

If only life were like that !

It's true that you can often provide elaboration. But you can't use slurs or cry fire or decide that words mean whatever you want them to mean. You can twist things a little bit if you are careful and charismatic.

You intend to convey some kind of meaning but who is to blame when meaning fails to be transmitted? — Andrew4Handel

The metaphor of words 'containing' or 'transmitting' meaningstuff is popular but maybe misleading. The typical picture is that we know what we mean in some intimate way. That may be assuming too much. We find out who we are as we listen to what we say.

How do you classify words? I think you could picture them in such a way that it's absurd to say they have the property of being definable. — frank

At the moment, I really like Brandom's approach. Words/concepts are not semantic atoms. Claims are, because people are held responsible for them. Words/concepts are 'parasites' on the meaning of claims, of what they make a discursive self responsible for saying and doing in the future. We all keep one another honest. We all tend the garden of meaning together.

Neorationalism, but it's just us inheriting software, messing with it, and passing it on. We 'are' (in our most disembodied ghosty selves) evolving semantic norms.

I don't know whether you or anyone else is saying that words are deterministic and meanings inflexible. — Andrew4Handel

Concepts / semantic rules are like hot metal that can be bent. We can all push on the norms, but only by mostly obeying them. If you talk totally crazy stuff, no one can understand you. No one will be persuaded to do things a little differently from now on.

I personally think the extension of a word can be related to somebody's' personal web of experience and words can combine to make new meanings for the individual. — Andrew4Handel

I suspect that is how new poetry / philosophy is born. Someone feels differently, 'abuses' language, uses a tool the 'wrong' way --- but it feels good / right also to others and catches on.

In other words, reason suggests naturalism is false, or at least, incomplete, that there's an explanation needed to account for our preference for such self-evident truths? — Tom Storm

I think self-evident truths are supposed to be the fingerprints of the Divine.

Nagel's point is that if we are to be considered rational beings, then this is because we accept the testimony of reason, not because we are compelled to do so by the requirements of adaptation, but because we can see the truth of its statements. I think it is that power to discern apodictic truths which caused the ancients to grant it a kind of quasi-religious status, and conversely the tendency to deprecate reason as simply an evolved capacity is an indicator of a kind of deep irrationality. — Wayfarer

<another option>

To make an argument is indeed to appeal to norms, often within the quest to modify those very norms. Our concept of the rationality itself has evolved through endless self-investigation and self-clarification. Apodictic truths tend to be analytic, syntactical, grammatical, a mere elaboration or unfolding or making explicit of these often tacit norms. It's not at all clear that we need some god to have installed these norms, especially as we've come to understand evolution. Does us having evolved mean we can't trust our own norms ? If so, why exactly ? I don't think we have any choice. We 'are' these norms, and we/they are liquid rather than solid, always on the move, if sufficiently slowly for us to remain sane.

So what that says is vagueness is the residue left when you have a dichotomous or bivalent frame - the question of whether something is A or not-A - and can only declare there is no evidence one way of the other to decide the matter. Uncertainty is maximal as neither thesis, nor antithesis, can be positively claimed. — apokrisis

:up:

This makes sense to me, and I guess it doesn't sound like the thereness of the there, or the transconceptual redness of the rose (which may be nonsense, that's the issue.)

We are organisms. We are in a pragmatic modelling relation with reality. We beat all other known organisms by modelling reality at four levels of organismic organisation - genes, neurons, words and numbers. We are capable of conscious surprise at truths on all levels from chemistry to abstract mathematical patterns. — apokrisis

Do you think Dawkins gets how this happened right ? In general ? Is all this delicate complexity the result of millions of years of research and development the old fashioned way ?

Is our chemistry special ? I can imagine other planets having different kinds of life. Granted that we don't have the skill to create life yet, is it possible in principle ?

Is something like consciousness fundamental in your view ? I can't tell. I might be stuck in reductionist goggles, but I'm trying to bend the spoon by bending my mind.

... and he considered himself a (great world-historical) philosopher, ergo "Spinozist". — 180 Proof

:up:

This is too pantheistic, even for Hegel (a christian pan-en-theist). As he (with Maimon) points out, Spinoza's metaphysics is acosmist. Insofar as "Hegel may have been trying to update Spinoza", I think he reconceptualizes one of Spinoza's infinite modes ("the world") as a 'meta-historicizing teleology' according to his own idealist dialectic ("Geist"). — 180 Proof

I was probably going too far. Hegel is a mountain.

Could you elaborate on the bold part ?

I don't think you can replace self-referential talk. — Andrew4Handel

He was saying that we do use such talk, that 'I' has a use in our language.

The word "self" (like "god") exists and we use – "talk about" – it meaningfully and incessantly (re: Meinong's Jungle, Witty's language games, etc). — 180 Proof

Can you give examples? — Andrew4Handel

Sure. A law is something set down on the ground in a certain place, a marker. The original metaphor is mostly forgotten, though we still talk of laying down the law.


https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=law


Old English lagu (plural laga, combining form lah-) "ordinance, rule prescribed by authority, regulation; district governed by the same laws;" also sometimes "right, legal privilege," from Old Norse *lagu "law," collective plural of lag "layer, measure, stroke," literally "something laid down, that which is fixed or set."

Who has the power to have the final say in what words mean or refer to? — Andrew4Handel

In my view, we as a community do this. We always inherit cultural software from previous generations (down to the meanings of the words we use), and then we modify this heritage (adapting to life today ) and finally pass it on.

Perhaps this residue is what is meant by vagueness.

Or as Bateson put it - the semiotician’s motto - we have to have a difference that makes a difference. That is what separates meaning from noise. — apokrisis

:up:

Yes. I think you see what I am getting at. There 'seems' to be a residue that can't be scraped. But maybe it's nonsense to say so. Weird stuff.

Do you think any computer was ever surprised by anything? When we have good reason to think that about some dumb box, plugged into a socket and mindlessly radiating its heat, then perhaps something new might be up. — apokrisis

I don't think so. I'm just curious about the boundary, what might count as surprise.

What you are writing is helpful and appreciated, just to be clear.

I think Hegel may have been trying to update Spinoza. The World is God, and We are God's eyes, God's spies, God's neurons. [ I use capital letters to get the Feel. ] Note that he saw the World growing toward freedom and self-knowledge and power. For Hegel, as I read the difficult bastard, God was not some frozen finished but rather a hale and hungry growing boy. Theology is God in the sense that God needs us, thinkings Himself through us, as us. Hegel was no escapist, no blamer of the world. He embraced history and all its filth as justified and necessary. He's a terrifying thinker in this sense. There is no higher court than Us as our norms evolve without foundation or instruction from some authority that would have to be tyrannical and alienated given the enlightenment imperative made explicit by Kant. Are we puppets ? Or do we govern and create ourselves like young men leaving home to join the larger world for the first time as autonomous citizens ?

I'd say the evidence can be interpreted either way. I don't deny that people who have had life-changing encounters with uncreated light may be deluded. I just don't believe they are. — Art48

:up:
I appreciate the honesty.

But the other standard entropic pattern is fractal fracturing. A crumbling over all scales. An inverse story of force being projected in a single direction and splintering in a way that allows it to completely fill a 3D space with its dissipated energy. — apokrisis

:up:

That is awesome. Thanks ! Beautiful stuff.

I suppose my theory of language is that is must start by referring to things before we can abstract to concepts. — Andrew4Handel

I also think it starts pretty simple, maybe with worldly objects, but then we can make lots of metaphors which drift into literal concepts as we use them enough.

I thought you were saying we bring something into existence (or you might say reify it) with language. — Andrew4Handel

Thanks ! What I meant was that the self (not the body) is a learned performance, a piece of training, something like software that runs on the body's hardware. Descartes takes this discursive self for granted as the thing that just cannot be doubted. He took the unity of his voice for granted. He took semantic and inferential norms (a public self-transcending language) for granted. If you look at my 'normative crowbar' thread, I talk about how a philosopher, as a philosopher, always assumes a social world, because philosophy is always directed beyond the self. Philosophy moralizes. It says : Thou ought.

You need actual meaningful dissipation to count as being real. — apokrisis

:up:

Ignoring AI for a moment, do you think it possible in principle to create simple synthetic life, such a nanobots that make copies of themselves ?

Time to stop worrying about the fantasies of machines becoming conscious. — apokrisis

Just to be clear, I'm 'worried' instead that we humans are not conscious, that we are 'only' computers.

Happiness for us humans is flow states - like Neal Cassidy steering the Magic Bus of hippies across the wide American expanse with his feet on the wheel.

Running a trail or any other skilled activity is the joy of being the still centre of an energetic flow, regulating chaos and uncertainty in a way that keeps building the core self that outpaces its world in terms of delivering what the Second Law demands even faster than it knew was possible. — apokrisis

:up:

A modelling relation where the vortex can figure out where the entropy gradients are in its environment and go chase them. — apokrisis

:up:

Yes, that makes sense.

You can do the human thing of imagining there is some greater world of “mind” that dissipative structure is heir to. But the human condition is quite transparently prosaic. — apokrisis

That's just it. I lean toward mind being 'just' 'material' or embodied, patterns of human doings (noises and marks and facial expressions ) in time and space. But I fight the usual biases to think so. There 'is' feeling. There 'is' color. Under or beyond the concept. Maybe this is weird because I'm thinking too reductively. Problem of the being of meaning, of the meaning of being.

A vortex holds still, perennially reforming the same gurgling twist, for as long as it can maintain a greater rate of entropy production - drain your bath faster than would be the case if the bath just had to rely on an inefficient and unstructured glugging at the plug hole. — apokrisis

I was recently thinking about just this structure, which is really as beautiful as it gets. Philosophers used to talk about whether rivers could be stepped in twice. Vortices are better. Correct me if I am wrong, the but the main idea of dissipative structures is right here.

Discourse loses depth in use like a tire loses its grooves and it’s a constant battle of the emotional and intellectual creative to maintain a grip on the road that is identity. — Baden

This is how I understand what Heidegger means with gossip / chatter. Deflated average generic tribal soul. We depend on in it. It is almost sanity itself. But it's limp and fuzzy facelessness. Brave new metaphors cool off into a common sense which is deaf to the contingency of those metaphors, which have hardened into obviousness which resents being challenged.

I find myself heavily oriented to the poetic, which has the disadvantage of a tendency towards ambiguity and obscurity but the advantage (for me :smile: ) of being more fun, non-committal, and emotive when it does hit. — Baden

I very much relate. Do you like Nietzsche ? When he's joyfully wicked, there's nothing better.

You ought to believe it in order not to believe it; that is you commit yourself to your own irrelevance in the face of the social just so that by creating regardless, the logic of your action creates its own justification — Baden

Yes, it's complex like that. In some ways we are tendrils inventing new communities, creating the taste our work (our personalities as our essential work) along with that work.

We want to exist. “I exist therefore I must exist” is the only coherent ethical injunction (see too: Beckett "I must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on") and a more salient corollary to Descartes cogito. We want to exist and we want to exist more. And the only way to do that is to play. — Baden

Exactly. That's also in Feuerbach, a species' love for itself. Play. An organism 'vents it power' most thoroughly in play. Will-to-power, will-to-explore, will-to-play, will-to-recontextualize-for-the-hell-of-it, will-to-fuck-around, will-to-sing, will-to-spontificate. [ Yes, spontaneously pontificate. A Freudian might say pondeficate ? ]

Philosophy is one mode of play in pursuit of the ethic of existence. — Baden

It's just so endlessly good, an infinite game.

“Philosophy is the true home of irony, which might be defined as logical beauty,” Schlegel writes in Lyceumfragment 42: “for wherever men are philosophizing in spoken or written dialogues, and provided they are not entirely systematic, irony ought to be produced and postulated.” The task of a literary work with respect to irony is, while presenting an inherently limited perspective, nonetheless to open up the possibility of the infinity of other perspectives: “Irony is, as it were, the demonstration [epideixis] of infinity, of universality, of the feeling for the universe” (KA 18.128); irony is the “clear consciousness of eternal agility, of an infinitely teeming chaos” (Ideas 69). A literary work can do this, much as Schlegel’s Lucinde had, by presenting within its scope a range of possible alternate plots or by mimicking the parabasis in which the comic playwright interposed himself within the drama itself or the role of the Italian buffo or clown (Lyceumfragment 42) who disrupts the spectator’s narrative illusion.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schlegel/#PhiAppSchIdeTra

Adding more computation does not necessarily equal the fact of sensation itself. — schopenhauer1

That's just it.

*******************************
We want to say something that can't be said. Aconceptual or subconceptual thereness of the bloody glowing redness of the rose. Or simply the scream and nausea of there being a here here in the worst placed. It's as if a chandelier of concepts was dipped in vat of nectar.

It's the feeling of hot water in the bath tub after hours of being sweaty outside. Not inferences and differential response but the ineffable Feeling.
*******************************

Imagine the above was written by a bot asked to explain what it was missing out on. Maybe I'm a Darwinian bot that only thinks I know what I'm talking about.

it shows something about art nonetheless, and not really or entirely by analogy. — Jamal

:up:

I agree. I think I was not right to call it a metaphor. I like the idea that language discloses or unveils phenomena. Adorno did that.

But where did society get its concepts from if not from the members of that society ? — RussellA

Excellent question ! Hegel wrote about this. Brandom's interpretation is very clean and updated for people with AP leanings and background.

You might think of our society as a kind of organism. All of us as individuals we can introduce novelty, make a case for the shifting of norms. Philosophy imposes itself normatively, claiming that it's better to do it this new way and not that old way. You can think of us also as symbolic termites. We build symbolic structures (like marriages and promises ) and live 'in' them. More than any other animal we live in a symbolic realm that we cocreate copreserve and codestroy. If concept are socially performed (I claim they are), then they aren't exact or perfect. But somehow we manage.