(I wrote:)
>> . . . it would seem impossible . . . to take into account the
>>nonconceptual in ways that are not essentially conceptual. Yet I do not
>>think a real world interpretation of the principles of cybernetics requires
>>an approach restricted in this way.
>
>I think it does. Even when the cybernetic principles are applied to
>artistic or religious experience, they remain conceptual constructions.
>Cybernetics used so does not cease to be cybernetics, a branch of science;
>it does not, and it should not, become art or religion.
I agree that cybernetics, _as a branch of science_, is restricted to
conceptual thought - by definition. I also think that art and religion, at
least _in their descriptive and formal aspects_, may also be considered
conceptual constructs. Like science, however, they also refer to
experiences of and in the world (Popper's Worlds 1 and 2), albeit in
different terms and in relation to emotive, pragmatic and social aspects.
But as Cassirer, Bronowski and others have pointed out, art and religion,
while they include feelings more prominantly than science, are also
products of formal symbolic or abstract capacities.
In speaking of approaches to experience which may be described in terms of
cybernetics, but which may not be restricted to conceptual constructs, I
was thinking of Popper's descriptions of the interactions and feedback of
information among Worlds 1, 2 & 3 - between the external world, our
immediate perceptions i.e. phenomenology, and our abstract or conceptual
constructs or models of these various experiences.
Three examples: (1) When a scientist performs an experiment, to put a
question to nature as it were, he is setting up a situation in which his
hypothesis is interacting with nonconceptual events revealed in pointer
readings or whatever. (2) When a physician examines a patient s/he is
trying to identify what the perceived phenomena might mean in relation to
possible diagnostic patterns i.e. concepts that relate to knowledge of
predictive utility. The whole process of checking out alternative
possibilities/diagnoses is a feedback between phenomena of the
clinic/laboratory and alternative explanatory concepts.
(3) An organizational theorist may be interested in a company's
organization chart and the formal channels of communication, but he will
also recognize the reality and impacts of informal contacts and the role of
scuttlebut which is too evanescent for formal description.
So my point was that cybernetic approaches may be assumed to characterize
all processes at whatever levels they occur, whether within consciousness
or not, not least those of the "embodied" mind which provide the context.
My view is that these processes are essential prerequisites for the
occurence of conceptual constructs, including those of art, religion and
science.
>> an environing universe which
>>is from a practical standpoint infinite in relation to human knowledge.
>
>I do not quite understand this remark. I strongly agree that
>"human concept are no more than tools of use to man". Human experience
>and action remain the primary reality in my philosophy.
There is a considerable philosophical literature (e.g. Popper, Whitehead,
Jaspers, Merleau-Ponty, despite their many other differences) which tends
to view human experience and action as real, certainly, but as also
reflective of existence and a universe which encompasses us all in modes
and dimensions which we do not grasp directly, "dingen as sich" beyond our
ken. Jaspers in particular talks about our language and concepts as limited
in their function as tools, as not more than Pointers to experience.
Korzybsky spoke of the "unspeakable" substratum of direct experience which
was the essential basis for language referents. Mortimer Adler considers
it one of the major errors of modern philosophy to believe that concepts
represent things in themselves rather than point to realities beyond them.
(Once again all this may be rather too briefly summarized to be fully
intelligible!)
>Yet a considerable part of philosophy: about the structure of the Universe,
>its past and future, and how the Cosmic order is maintained --
>what the Germans called Naturphilosophie --
>disappeared, because science came to a point where
>it could speak about these things with confidence, while philosophers
>only expressed views. I believe that epistemology now comes up
>to a point where it is becoming science.
>This is not to deny that philosophy defines the role and place of science.
>But there is a feedback --
I of course recognize the validity of the general point being made, which I
also think is quite consistent with the view that I have tried to present.
It may be said that science involves the conscious clarification and
formalization of many aspects of previously unanalyzed and/or inadequately
understood experience. It has been a contribution of the philosophy of
science and epistemology to help in clarifying appropriate methods and
processes. But it may be a category mistake (in Ryles's sense) to imagine
that the principles of conscious conceptualization will ever actually
include the so-called unconscious, i.e. those physiological aspects of the
"embodied" aspects of mind which are the existential prerequisites for
consciousness.
These are indeed very fundamental problems, and there have been many
distinguished men of science who have written about the scope and limits of
science, and the imponderables and uncertainties involved. As I understand
many of these writers, adequate answers must come to terms with
phenomenology which point to existence (which I referred to above as the
"environing universe"), as well as the terms in which we perceive the
world, and so must come to terms with Popper's 3 worlds (and their
cybernetic interrelationships!).
Anyway, that's how I interpret these matters at this time! My position is,
I think, consistent with the framework being put forward by Don Mikulecky,
(although unquestionably less rigorous in terms of mathematical
symbolism!). Thanks for the opportunity for discussion afforded by PCP.
Cheers and best wishes.
Bruce B.