> Valentin Turchin writes:
>
> (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.
>
It may be an illusion that science is that different from art and
religion. It is clear that after the fact, we dress up our scientific endeavors
to fit a certain "objective" format, but the actual thought processes
are not necessarily that different. Clearly, emotion plays a role in
science, but since the myths of science make this a taboo, it must be
dealt with in a more pseudo-rational packaging.
> 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.
The act of experimentation almost always invoves measurement.
Measurement is a form of replacing "real world" stuff with abstractions
(numbers usually). Thus in essence, experimental science claims to be
closer to the "real world" than theoretical science, but this again is
the commonly accepted myth. Theoretical science is far less different from
art and religion.
Consider the modeling relation. There are two entities, one natural,
one formal. The natural event is subject to causal changes. We invoke an
encoding process to represent this by a formal system. In the formal
system we mimic the causal event by implication. Then we decode the formal
system and compare it with the natural system. This process is at the very
root of our conscious process whether it be being applied to science, art,
religion, or anything else.
> (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.
A perfect example of the modeling relation above!
> (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.
>
An interesting contrast. The physician, steeped in reductionist myth,
treats the body as a machine, but the industry person is able to transcend
this?
> 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.
>
This sounds more like what I was trying to get to. Is it?
>>> 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.
I would submit that the position attributed to me (which I certainly
champion) is really best attributed to a growing number of authors.
Last night on NPR's Market Place, someone spoke of the economy as
"not a mere machine, but more like an ecosystem".The complexity idea
is still primitive in the works of Kauffman and the Santa Fe Institute
crowd, was nicely done by Levins and Lewontin in the book "The Dialectical
Biologist", and has roots in other works such as Capra's and Peat and Briggs.
This is an idea which, I believe, will not go away and needs to be
studied if we are to delve into these epistemological ideas. I think
we must, for one message coming from all this is that the emporer has no
clothes. Newtonian, Cartesian reductionist science has to some large
extent lead us down a garden path. As the message of the complexity
buffs is developed, we can no longer retain our innocence. Once again,
this is why Rosen's work seems so important in this context, he seems
to have taken it further than anyone else and he began in the 1950's!
Best regards, Don Mikulecky