@Ding an Sich,
Ding an Sich wrote:
Razzleg wrote:
Maturana might go as far as saying that all of what we call "observation" is verbal/reported, but isn't his own model of consciousness based on cellular research (or a metaphor based on the same)? And wasn't cellular structure discovered in the course of mechanical observations of an undescribed substrate of biological existence? Maturana's metaphor is the product of the history of a phenomena, whose unspoken existence proceeds that metaphor by millions of years. You might be tempted to say that those "millions of years" only have a linguistic context...i would contest that, of course...but regardless, they have no linguistic precedent. They are not merely the product of a new combination of previously "known facts" -- their origin seems to be pre-linguistic...
Mightn't Maturana be oversimplifying the relationship between a languaging being and her environment, if he reduces that relationship to that one distinguishing characteristic? Mightn't all of those other common biological relationships be equally at play?
Don't get me wrong...i'm not opposed to the idea of autopoesis. i'm just questioning the relationship between "it" and consciousness, and consciousness's relationship to the non-auto-...
You're on to something here, Razzleg, and it is precisely this: how can correlationists (such as Maturana and Varela) account for events occurring prior to the advent of conscious beings? How can they deal with the statements proposed by scientists on such things as the beginning of the universe, which are realist (not necessarily naive realist, Fresco, but perhaps causal, direct, indirect, speculative, etc. ) in their nature? A scientists does not say, "The universe came into existence 16 billion years ago 'for us'". Instead, they say, "The universe came into existence 16 billion years ago.", without any sort of qualification involving coextension, coexistene, etc. It's a good point. :-)
Thanks for the ups. Part of my thought was that, while i can see the correlationists' point regarding the value of information, in terms of attaining a personal "personal (i swear that the repetition wasn't accidental) vantage point", or a sense of self being derived from a social exchange -- this doesn't prevent the "unrealized" person from having an alternative, although perhaps equally indirect, access to the circumstance in which such a being might find herself.
That is, in a long-winded way to say, that a person (or individual, or
Dasein, or whatever nomenclature seems appropriate) might have multiple avenues of access to the "real". The value of each "avenue" may be unconsciously (or sub-consciously?) determined (or primed?) but that does not necessarily discount other alternatives' validity. (Heh, that "shortened" version didn't prove to be a useful bypass.)
i guess that the super-short version of what i was trying to say is that, it seems to me, people can sometimes observe evidence of that which they are not prepared to perceive.
fresco wrote:
The key ontological (existential) issue here is not about "time", but in what way the concept of "time" is related to the chosen substrate. The naive realists hold that substrate to be "physicality", but phenomenologists have drifted towards "nested systems". Insofar as any system is by definition dynamic, a "time factor" can be considered axiomatic.
But doesn't that assume that consciousness, the domain inhabited by phenomenologists, of nested systems is dependent on the bracketing of certain topics -- and that this bracketing thus highlights certain limits -- if time is taken to be axiomatic, i.e. a premise beyond question, doesn't that seem to imply that its status extends beyond, or at least as, a "bracket"?
fresco wrote:
You obviously don't understand why Maturana and Varela have discarded "information" as an explanatory concept. This is not about "language games". It is about starting from "living systems" as the ontological and epistemological substrate rather than elemental particles or energy. Those concepts are evoked by those living systems (humans) which operate as though in "an observer realm" as a major aspect of their adaptive behavior. Essentially there are no "sensory inputs"....there are merely "perturbences of structure" which result in restructuring.
But doesn't that discard seem at all questionable, even within its given context? What prevents "perturbations" and "input" from being equally possible for (or available to) protuberances of structure? Mightn't the structure, of either cells or consciousness, welcome certain alien aspects of "reality" (or their environment) and reject others as too radical?
That "
as though" seems telling. Does the being designated as Dasein
only operate within the epoche it defines; or is its process intertwined with a plethora of other processes? Does it operate in a larger world, whose key qualifier seems to be "being-together", or is it a manifestation of "social solipsism"?
fresco wrote:
Those concepts are evoked by those living systems (humans) which operate as though in "an observer realm" as a major aspect of their adaptive behavior.
Does this "adaptive behavior" exclude any recursive evaluation external to that "observer realm"? Since the projected limits of that "observer realm" seems to represent
the limit to the observable, to
what need an observer, as such, adapt? It seems as if different stimuli, and the evidence thereof, for structural alteration would be erased by the restructuring -- and thus that discontinuity between one state and the next (be it not circular) would be effectively invisible...
However fundamental it seems for Maturana (i'd love to read your personal opinion), it seems to me as if a living system must have access to alien data (sensory, scientific, whatev) to adapt for survival. This alien data might be processed as "explanation" in order to make it cohesive with given information, but it seems that the dynamic that promotes structural change cannot be wholly one-sided.
If you read my OP in this thread:
"'Time is an abstract measurement'...yes. 'Time is not needed in the universe'...yes. 'The natural world is simply movement through space and the conversion of energy to matter and matter to energy'...wait doesn't the word "through" imply a temporal measurement --how otherwise to mark the entrance and exit? Hmmm..."
One could conceive of a universe in which time is not needed, or is merely an abstract measurement. But to conceive of a universe in which time exists as motion or process, even abstractly, one must concede that bodies, including living systems, interact with one another with mutual consequence. Even if consciousness were merely an inevitable byproduct of "living" (which it evidently is not since biological existence is not a necessary cause of "consciousness"), to what else, besides a merely solipsistic note, would one attribute such intellectual trends as economics, ecology, or astronomy...? Certain judgements within each of these fields betrays a certain blindness to circumstances not immediately affecting the "enunciator" of such perspectives, but the very existence of such fields of inquiry seems to feed the idea of combative contrary information (i.e. contra-diction resolving itself via recursive+externally causal/formal recourse)...
And let me address this briefly:
fresco wrote:
You are on the right track.
"Information" can be generally defined as that which triggers the direction of "choice" between alternatives. In common parlance, those "alternatives" are not life and death issues for the individual, so they are outside the range of issues which Maturana seeks to encapsulate for the individual . In other words "languaging" for him is akin to a type of "social dancing" (structural coupling) which serves to co-ordinate and perpetuate macro-systems (social groups) in their survival mode. To me, it is like equating language to the chemical signals involved in the coherence of a hive of insects.
From the comments above, it seems as if Maturana's model cannot take account of the "social fringe". While many persons' choices can be reduced to the statistical average, equivalent to "social dancing" -- other individuals take part in an entirely different sort of activity. Their choices directly impact their individual survival. Perhaps those endangered persons act merely as a social barrier that enables existing "social survival", but i am beginning to suspect that a model that entertains that view also inadvertently endorses certain social/economic class distinctions -- a more sophisticated version of social Darwinism, perhaps? It is not for the successful to achieve greatness, but for the whole to survive, that the lumpenproletariat must suffer? Bah, i won't attribute that idea to either Maturana or yourself, but the odor of it lingers, nonetheless...
Finally, Fil, you post so frequently that i can't keep up with you, not that that is necessarily a bad thing. But i've mainly constrained myself to following the fresco/ Ding an Sich/ Cyracuz thread in this topic's veritable debate-braid. As a consequence, i've only briefly scanned the alternate discussion between you, Krumple, and Cyr this evening, although i'm sure that there is much there of interest. To make short of my participation in that thread, i'll just respond to your first comment directed at me, and be done for the night:
Fil Albuquerque wrote:
Quote:"Time is an abstract measurement"...yes. "Time is not needed in the universe"...yes. "The natural world is simply movement through space and the conversion of energy to matter and matter to energy"...wait doesn't the word "through" imply a temporal measurement --how otherwise to mark the entrance and exit? Hmmm...
Unfortunately it seems my previous post was not enough to clarify the idea...
i suppose you can understand the radio station tuning metaphor on which the change of frequency doesn't mean that the station you were listening stopped existing...at such light time is just another axis of space where events are distributed thus given you the impression of motion forward...time is indeed another axis with space in space ! Nothing prevents an ensemble of existing you just don't have access to it because "you" are distributed through it...that, is you cannot access the all of information because its parted in sets where you as anything else are scattered with progressive change in content...
Oongawa -- my head is spinning. i"m sure you have qualified the hell out of this post in the meantime, but i am pretty lost...however, i don't want you to backtrack if my response is not relevant, that said --
i agree that the idea of "time" as a manifestation of consciousness's passing through different levels of "reality's frequency levels" is a viable model. And that consciousness, as the (measurable?) limit of a trajectory through such levels, is likewise tenable. However, to expand the radio station metaphor, given my limited experience with radios: what, in this metaphor, prevents the retention of an extended connection with radio stations beyond the range of newly tuned dials, and what prevents radio stations' signals, that is the means of radio towers abilities to transmit, from degrading -- either from mechanical failure or from lack of power...
i realize that "the radio" presented here is a metaphor, and i am stretching that metaphor to its breaking point -- but doesn't that breaking point beg the question of its anological propriety?
