[MD] Is this the inadequacy of the MOQ?

[rapsncows at fastmail.fm]

Alexander,
I replied to this yesterday, but it was too long so it didn't go out,
Tim

> [from the discussion between Alexander and Tim]
>
>
> [Alexander's Reply]
>
> What Russell did, was trying to prove arithmetic within the framework of
> formal logic. But formal logic is a Boolean algebra, which is just a
> particular kind of abstract algebra. In that case, formal logic is just a
> particular case among the set of abstract algebras (Ockham's razor at
> work).
> But now set theory is also just an abstract algebra. All of these
> concepts
> have axioms which can't be verified empirically. That is, they are just
> stated in the way "if we say this, then what if we can deduce statements
> in
> this way and that". So there is no ultimate fundaments there - just
> assumptions.

[Tim]
yes, faithful assumptions.

>
> 
> [Alexander's Reply]
>
> Some kind of patters in a structure should be left invariant by the
> mapping
> for the mapping to meaningful. And you have to decide on some kind of
> function. You could call it a kind of "systematic correspondence". The
> map
> help you to deduce statements concerning something in perception - but it
> will never tell you what was left out - that is, what became "variant".
> Most
> of things are left out by perception itself. So "correctness" does only
> exist within a concept of interpretation.

[Tim]
I understand your point about "correctness" only having meaning within a
concept of interpretation.  But, regarding the MoQ it seems that
Phaedrus was suggesting that the pattern in the structure to be left
invariant is the real you.  It seems taht you, the systematic
correspondence function, and correctness of the map are all ultimately
unknown, and that it is ours to have faith, dynamically, that they do
cohere.

>

> [Alexander's Reply]
>
> Well, I think that most of what is included in the "conscious experience"
> is
> static intellectual patterns. But not all together. When you fall down,
> after jumping up - this is a physical pattern. It is deduced by you
> balance
> organ, which is specialized to measure just that. When you lift up a
> stone,
> the muscles feed back information about how much they work, to the brain,
> and this gives you a sense of weight. That is also a physical pattern.
> When
> you feel hungry, that's a biological pattern - and the "staticness" of
> hunger could be the want for some particular kind of food. You would like
> to
> have egg, for instance and not sauerkraut.
> When you feel "shame" for something you have done, then that's a social
> pattern and so on.
> So you do directly perceive other patterns than intellectual (which
> should
> come as no surprise, as quality was attached to experience -> all
> patterns
> should be part of experience).


[Tim]
I have been thinking about going back and looking at your use of
mind/matter.  Maybe this would be a good place to bring it back in.
When I look at your above I see two simultaneous patterns, one in the
material, and one in my mind.  THese seem intertwined in such a way that
neither of them is me, but the process of intertwining them seems fair
to me - where I take my own existence as a leap of faith.



> [Alexander's Reply]
>
> A memory is, in itself, an abstraction. When you shall relate what
> someone
> has said, from memory, you don't remember every word exactly, after some
> time, just the "meaning" but this meaning is, of course, your
> interpretation. But telling that would be "telling the truth" of your
> memory
> - but that is perhaps not the truth concerning what the other person
> originally meant to say.
> In formal logic, you deduce the truth of a statement from the relations
> and
> the parts of the statement. "P->Q", is true whenever Q is true,
> regardless
> the value of P, for instance. This interpretation is termed "correct"
> within
> the frames of formal logic.
> Perhaps that's what you, and Mark too, have missed concerning the maps.
> To
> be able to attach a value to the figure of a map, you must first decide a
> scale and a measure, which assigns values to the figure. And here is the
> inadequacy of this approach: it doesn't tell you how to assign values or
> why
> some particular values were assigned.

[Tim]
yes.  I think.  But then what is the value of developing a metaphysics?

 

> [Alexander's Reply]
>
> No, it depends on the context. Negentropy, concerning energy, is defined
> as
> its ability to perform work, that is the degree of freedom. Concerning
> thermal energy (kinetic energy of atoms and molecules), the degree of
> freedom becomes statistical mechanics. To find all molecules of the air
> in a
> room, in one half of the room is very improbable, for instance, which
> make
> it a low entropy state. Maxwell's Demon would have to measure the
> momentum
> of all the molecules to be able to sort them - which costs energy - and
> this
> gives the information measure.

[Tim]
There was a time when I was supposed to have known something about
entropy.  I probably shouldn't pretend to that now!  Anyway, if you'll
excuse me, I'll try to go through it to refresh myself.  Also, since you
like words, it may interest you to know, if you don't already, that
"thermodynamics" is a misnomer, and that it would be better called
'thermostatics' - it doesn't deal with dynamic, but only equilibrium
systems).  Entropy (neg-entropy) is a hard concept.  It doesn't depend
on any context.  When the concept of entropy was first developed it was
in conjunction with extracting work.  That was before the development of
statistical mechanics, and so entropy was described from its context in
experience, regarding the ability to do work.  When stat mech was
developed,
entropy was derived from fundamental considerations.

So, you mentioned a room of air.  If the room of air is our system then
it is improper to talk of a configuration thereof as a state.  The way
to
say it is taht the configuration in which all the molecules are found in
only one half of the room contributes very little to teh overall entropy
of teh system.  As a simplified approximation, we can look at the
flipping of a coin, heads being one half of the room, tails the other
(the coin ignores interaction between flips).  In this case the system
(the room of air) would be the number of flips.  The partition function
would be the number of ways these flips could go.  All heads is one of
an increasing shitload of possibilities.  If the number of coin flips
approaches avagadro's number, you can say that that option contributes
essentially zero to the possible outcomes, and therefore, has nearly a
zero probability of occurrence.  Of course with air rather than coins
these options have to be weighted due to the fact taht air interacts and
causes an energy bias on the configurations; this only lessens the
contribution to the entropy of the system from teh configuration we are
talking about.


> [Alexander's Replay]
>
> But you should understand "inform" here as "organize" or "give form to".
> A
> society organized by just social convention would have quite different
> from
> a society governed by laws (=intellectual patterns), for instance.
> From the Webster's definitions of "inform" these aspects are the most
> important:
>
> 1 (obsolete): to give material form to
> 2a : to give character or essence to <the principles which inform modern
> teaching> b : to be the characteristic quality of : animate <the
> compassion
> that informs her work>

interesting, I was thinking of "confine" and "inform" as to their
functions, from a process perspective.  I still think that you have
interchanged "inform" and "confine" here.  But I think I have found my
error.  I don't think that I have given proper deference to teh social
confinement.  (There is an interesting discontinuity at this level that
I didn't really notice until now.)  What makes a society?  How does one
confine ones intelligence to the social?  I might answer that
intelligence suggest a 'fair' treatment of all I.  Hitler might argue
that jews should be exterminated.  How do we get out of this?!

 

> [Alexander's Reply]
>
> Let's just put it this way: if society didn't work to preserve itself it
> wouldn't exists - just like biological patterns.

First, since I am addressing mind/matter, isn't any given biological
pattern, a material pattern as well as a, hopefully congruent pattern in
my mind?  Second, society might work towards its destruction - even
naively.  Third, what is 'society'?  What does the MoQ say of this?

>

> [Alexander's Reply]
>
> Intellect can destroy society without destroying it, in the sense that
> you
> could imagine the destruction of it, without actually acting to destroy
> it.
> If you shut off society today, for instance, some tree billion people
> living
> in urban areas would die within a year. The civil wars, and other wars,
> which would breake out would probably kill at least another billion. So
> most
> people wouldn't find it being in their interest to die. An intellectual
> pattern which leads to the destruction of the body of the intellect, is
> self-destructing, just like will to suicide. Of course you could term it
> right in some sense, but I'm not sure that I would call a
> self-destruction
> intellectual pattern "high quality" - I would place it rather low - it is
> a
> will to change, but the change it starts is just the destruction of the
> idea
> itself.

I guess I will just mention the example from Lila, about the brujo.  One
of the suggestions is that the best solution was way out of the realm of
the local solutions.  One solution to the problem of the brujo was to
send him to another tribe where he naturally fit in.  If a contemporary
brujo were to think of society without confining himself to local,
provincial, short-sighted definitions, he might not worry about the
horror you mentioned above.  It seems that within the MoQ, there is
nothing to say to him.  If the picture of society to which he confines
himself intellectually is one that will inhabit teh Earth 100,000 years
hence, what can the MoQ say?
 
> ***
>
> [Alexander on the last part]
>
> I came to think about one way to put intellectual supremacy clearly. Rule
> by
> law again.
> Rule by law, instead of social convention, makes it clearer what society
> wants and what it does not. Categorical law is even higher intellectual
> quality. If the law is inconsistent with itself, then it could happen
> that
> you have no choice but breaking it. That would, indeed, be "low quality"
> at
> an intellectual lever. And it would also be low quality if you wouldn't
> be
> able to deduce if a particular act would break the law or not.

Maybe I'll lave this on the back of my mind for now,
Tim
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