Message from Stan
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Commenting on Karl's interesting posting:
Most successful systems do allow careful explorations into the currently
unacknowledged realm of possibilities -- but not, as you point out,
undisciplined, or unlicensed activities of this kind.
Our culture today is in a parlous place, with more and more unlicensed
new activities being tried out here and there. Some are being tried out
as attempts to perpetuate the very economic system itself as it
approaches its demise. For example, the use of fracking for natural
gas, merely a filthy activity in a desert (but for a good reason! -- the
need of our growth economy for energy), but now the involved
corporations are trying to carry out these activities in the very places
where the citizens themselves are living, thus destroying any joy in
life that might be had from the growth economy. Here we have an
accepted activity being tried out in unacceptable territory -- hence
resulting political unrest. This proposed activity is actually not
being suppressed by the political powers, presumably because they
suppose that energy is more important than contented lives. And, of
course, as our culture has accepted that exchange value is the only
actual value, the political powers must acknowledge that those who have
the most resources (the corporations) are likely to be the most
'correct' in their extensions into new cognitive territory.
STAN
On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 3:47 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan
<pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es <mailto:pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es>> wrote:
Dear Joseph,
On Similarity and Differences
The human nervous system processes both the similarity and the diversity
properties of the world (of the sensous impressions the organs
transmit). We polarise in our mental concepts based on evolutionary
achievements.
For the animal, it brings survival and reproduction advantages, if it
remembers correctly. Remembering is based on the similarity property of
impressions (ex perception and ex memory are compared and matched). We
have deep cultural agreements that
* it is good to remember correctly,
* it is good to recognise the similarity property above the diversity
property,
* it is good to relate one's subjective impressions to a common,
objective factor,
* it is good to have one common experience each one is subject to in an
equal fashion,
* the common experience is transcendental, invisible, eternal,
ubiquitous, egalising
To talk about diversity is to leave the common ground. It is
unquestionably more civilised to talk about the common, the unifying,
the objective. Therefore, there are huge communicational difficulties to
be expected, if one talks about that what is not always there, may be
very much varied, is not uniform. There is a large risk of becoming
subjective, therefore unitelligible, if one leaves the
foreground-background convention of the unified, standard, invariable
against chaotic, unpredictable, varied.
To overcome this communicational danger, the accountant has created a
Table on which one can demonstrate the relation between foreground and
background, that is, between similarity and diversity. Here, one can
observe, what you write, namely: "Some things (the most interesting
ones) are partly similar to and partly different from others at the same
time, and the predominance of one can increase at the expense of the
other. Further, in the system of Stephane Lupasco (Principle of Dynamic
Opposition, up-dated in Logic in Reality), diversity, negativity,
inexactitude, vagueness, instability, etc. are given appropriate
ontological value vs. identity, stability, etc., their "positive"
partners. "
Maybe in Varna we can get around to find a toy-maker who will produce
136 pairs of wooden blocks and we can spend a morning or afternoon
ordering (and re-ordering) these. Then, the meaning of the terms you
refer to can be explicated by deictic methods.
It is not the intellectual level needed that makes it complicated to use
a two- or three-dimensional concept of order. It is rather the
convention of not doing such because such is not done. Once one has
overcome the feeling of "breaking taboos brings forth punishment" one
can break the taboo of talking about what diversity is to be found in
the collection {1+16, 2+15, 3+14, ..8+9} which to our conventions is all
alike. After the fundamental break with cultural conventions has been
achieved and fully, internally accepted (like waging the crises of
adolescence and daring to talk back to Teacher /parents, authority, dear
leader, brother no. 1, etc./), it will be easy to extend this experiment
to the collection {1+1, ...,16+16}. Then, one can discuss, whether an
order on the red building blocks is more pleasing to the eye than an
order on the blue building blocks. After this, one may discover the
concept of a "convoy", that is, of those pairs of buiding blocks that
have to move together during a reorder. From this point on, the
seduction will have worked and the participants of the workshop will
order and reorder like fallen angels.
There is a forbidden pleasure in paying attention to details no one
should pay attention to and disregard that what everybody is told to
look at. There are libraries about how not to behave like one should
behave. Some, like Robin Hood, Spartacus, Stauffenberg, and some others,
have a positive image. There are some others who are killed because they
are not so as they should be e.g. Giordano Bruno and some others. It is
not easy to leave the common understanding.
We can always pretend we investigate a problem of number theory,
category theory, information theory or so while we play with the
building blocks, if the System Stability Agency Special Forces take us
away in Varna for enhanced interrogations. In fact, we will have
overthrown the predominance of the Oneness over the Differences.
I do hope that these remarks will be helpful.
Karl
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--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Avda. Gómez Laguna, 25, Pl. 11ª
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Telf: 34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) Fax: 34 976 71 5554
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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