The ontological assumptions of science.

JLN, this thread started with:

That sure looks like an argument against the existence of trees, and presumably me as well since I need to eat the fruits of the earth to survive.

It seems that the only way to experience "unity" is to spend years learning to turn off part of your brain, or take illegal drugs. Since no one here has been able to explain to me why this is a "better" way to see things or how that reality is more "real" than the one we normally perceive, I will muddle along with my poor spiritually-dysfunctional, egocentric mind, magically creating very convincing perceptions of an "ontic reality" which may or may not correspond to anything which might actually exist.

Terry, that's what you "should" do, because you have no alternative.

Terry,

At the risk of boring you I re-iterate from other threads that "existence" does not imply "existence in its own right". For nondualists it always implies relationship. Thus "trees" or "you" exist by virtue of their relationships to the rest of "the observed world", just like "up" has no meaning except with respect to "down". If you can understand this fundamental point, then all your "common sense" skepticism falls apart. I cannot make it simpler than that.

The directional example of "up" and "down" gives a clear look at its relational (relativistic) nature. In "outer" space there is no up or down, only in relation to a base (i.e., our ground or floor) and--in another sense--"in relation" to our purpose.

I know it may be a little late in the day as far as this topic goes but I'm still wondering about this question:



Terry, does this question/problem still linger in your mind, have the subsequent pages shed any light on this from your angle? Fresco, JL, I guess maybe you have hinted at this with the description of relationship and the implications rather than just non existence but is there any other angle you would approach this from in terms of explanation or is this the crux of it as far as you're concerned?

Terry (right now serving as my generalized other), I have the "perception" (it's really an intuition whether right or wrong) that nothing exists by, or in, itself, as a totally independent absolute; all things exist as part of a whole; all things exist in relation to all other things (and, of course, there are no "things" only processes). For that reason my handle is JLnobody (as opposed to JLsomebody or JLanybody).
As such, I do "believe" in "existence" but only of some kind of absolute whole, absolute because "it" cannot be defined in relationship to something other than itself. If there are multiple universes then they still constitute a collective whole.
But the only thing I am sure of is my existence as-an-ongoing-expression -of-relationships from moment to moment. Tat tvam asi--that art thou.

Ashers,

Maturana gives an answer to Terry's "unexpected events" in terms of "perturbations of a life form". The key point is that from the organism's operational point of view there is no distinction between "internal" and "external" events (heart attacks could be equivalent to falling ceilings in terms the the need to "adapt" or die). The differentiation of events as internal or external, or the mode of adaptatation (including languaging itself), lies solely in the domain of the languaging observer of which the organism, if still conscious, may be a member. Note that without the involvement of organisms, there are no "events".

The origin of "observers" is explained by Maturana's analysis of language as "second order structural coupling". Such an organizational mode like "life" itself is a spontaneous manifestation of structure within dynamic systems. Catastrophe theory goes some way in providing a metalogical model with which to visualize this.

The transcendental position takes a further leap towards a vantage point
in which all distinctions, including structure/non-structure are seen as passing aspects of "the flux", yet whose dynamism is itself only meaningful with respect to a finite static observer. Thereafter lies the ineffable void !

Interesting stuff. I'm still in the process of pondering terms like "structural coupling" and "autopoiesis" so I have a bit of a loose analogy in mind, it may be off base but the 1st question is, are you familiar at all with peer-to-peer (p2p) systems in networking as opposed to client-server (CS) models?

So in the CS model we have entities with fixed roles and functions in the relationship, clients, requesters of information and servers, providers of it. In the p2p model we have a set of peers who are, in a pure p2p, decentralised and who switch between being requesters and providers depending on the interaction. So the identity is defined in the changing relationships/interactions that take place dynamically.

So then I wonder with regards to this internal/external distinction if you might, from a p2p point of view in say a file transfer, see the internal and external as being the current state that peer x has in terms of this file distribution (internal) and the stimuli of another peer as external. In this context the distinction does seem to fall away because the internal of peer x is based on it's dynamic relations with all the other peers and their internal structure and the stimuli from another peer is based on this same dynamic interplay.

Also, I read on wikipedia from Maturana & Varela, which partly inspired by thinking about this:



On a side note, it's interesting to me that if you had say a file transfer of some sort with a fixed set of peers and you looked at the system from a more holistic perspective, you would see a movement towards completeness as each peer dragged the other up "by the bootstraps" * however, with a non fixed, dynamic and ever changing set of peers completeness loses it's meaning.

By the way, many people I speak to regarding terms like the ineffable void have such negative conotations surrounding them, like isolation, seperation, darkness etc etc, nothing could be further from the truth in my mind and it has always seemed such negative ideas presuppose an "I" to be in each of those "states" which totally contrasts against the very nature of void! Maybe more of an S&R forum point though.

* I haven't mentioned how such files or things might intially be introduced into the p2p and the nature of "seeders" and "leeches" but I think the general points stand.

No, but give me a reference.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer

This is the main point though:



Typically this is used in file sharing amongst networks, so the distribution of a file and the communication/interaction is what then differs to the client-server model. Hope that helps.

Ashers,

I understand the above from the point of view of "information transfer" but M's system defines the organism as "informationally closed". Structural coupling is not about an "exchange of information" ... more like "consensual dancing" or "tennis". Wittgenstein's "language games" throw some light on the this.

The data transfer isn't so important in the analogy, it's more the way role/identity is defined on dynamic relationship that I thought was curious. What you say about organisms being informationally closed is interesting though, when you say it is more like a consensual dance, is this because information exchange would imply one partner is less complete than the other and the relationship is inbalanced if that is the right word? I'll check out the language games anyway.