PUZZLED ELEPHANT TO CHRIS AGAIN:
CHRIS WROTE: An EITHER/OR, and so an object perspective, favours
discreteness and the particular in that the process of distinction making
reflects the process of taking from the set [of?] all possible expressions
one particular expression.
ELEPHANT WROTE: As I've said before, I agree about there being a link
between propositional knowing and the engendering of discreteness. There is
something profound about our relationship with language to talk about here.
However, a discussion of this in terms of set theory will somewhat miss the
point, I suspect. A good example of this is your touching beleif that there
is such a thing as the set of all possible expressions.
CHRIS WROTE: Ummm..you misinterpret! -- I spoke of an 'object perspective'
and that will give you a boundary and within that boundary is the set of all
possible expressions for that PARTICULAR object perspective. All object
perspectives are LOCAL and I was talking LOCAL, you seem to be trying to
jump ahead, to abstract from local to non-local. Slow down :-)
ELEPHANT: It's aways good to know what the other guy is saying. But my
being symultaneously too slow and too quick is something you will have to
get used to, it seems. Perhaps the only way to cater for idiots like me is
to actually say what you mean in simple sentences. Yes, you "spoke" of an
"object perspective", but since you made no attempt to relate this
explicitly to what you then said about sets of possible expressions, how on
earth was I supposed to know what the connection was? "Slow down" I say. A
quietly spoken sentence can communicate so much more than a WORD can.
Now, what on earth is this "object perspective" you speak of? It seems you
don't mean what one might ordinarily mean by the expression, ie the general
world-embracing perspective from which there are objects, because you speak
of this as a LOCAL perspective. Do you mean that there is a different local
perspective for every object? How are we meant to make sense of that? Or
do you mean something else? I have, as before, no real idea what you mean
by any of this. I don't think that you have the right to insert this:
<snip -- deleted section based on misinterpretation)
until you have done atleast something to explain to us what the correct
interpretation is. I don't think the capitalised use of the word LOCAL is
really any advance here. It seems you just want to shout at people.
ELEPHANT WROTE: Still, interesting as your error here [in thinking that
there is a set of all >> possible expressions] is, it still doesn't help me
escape my puzzlement about your association of the continuous and the
general e.t.c. Perhaps we will get on to that.
CHRIS WROTE: the error is sort of yours, I made none other than assuming
that my paragraph was clear enough.. :-)
ELEPHANT: That is exactly the error I am accusing you of, and just about the
worst thing it is possible to do
in Philosophy. The whole task of philosophy is to take things which seem
obvious and clear enough first off, and ask, in an open humble fashion
whether they really are true. That's what you need to do in your own mind
if you are ever to enter into discussion about it with others. With that in
mind, I would have appreciated it if you had dealt with my questions as a
whole, rather than just picking on the one you felt most obviously
dismissable. I asked you about your conceptions of continuity and of
generality, and I would appreciate your dealling with these outstanding
puzzling questions sometime soon. The
alternative to philosophy here is Dogma, and that seems to be exactly what
you are expounding. You don't care whether what you say in your verbless
capitalised gedanke makes sense to anyone else, and you treat intelligent
questions as an annoyance to be batted away. I have a temper, but I do not
lose it over little things. Calm me by explaining yourself, by showing some
humility, and by not assuming that every unclarity is some other idiot's
stupid fault.
CHRIS WROTE: The set of all possible expressions includes (a) the particular
object under consideration and (b) the notion of that object's negation.
ELEPHANT WROTE: Sorry to be "VERY PRECISE", but objects are not negated,
propositions are. Again, the connection between judgements and objects is
something I'm hoping we can discuss - not just assume in passing.
CHRIS WROTE: I think you should look at the neurology more. ANY THING, real
or imagined
is associated with a set of harmonics that includes that thing's negation. A
piece of music with a key and set of harmonics includes a set of 'no-nos' as
part of the 'rules', the grammar of music and that will include all keys
other than the particular one used and one of those is the 'opposite'.
ELEPHANT:
Please, MOQers tell me, am I the only one who finds the 'answer'
impenetrable? Chris, you ask us to pay attention to neurology. Fine, I'd
question there being any substantive results in this feild that can give us
all the philosophical answers, but I'm always ready to look. Neurology?
Fine. But what on earth do you mean by "a set of harmonics that includes
that thing's negation"? Harmonics? Yes, I know what they are, I think.
Negation? Yes, I've heard the word before. Harmonics of negation? Er,
please, um, er, SIR.. I think we could do with an explanation!
You see, this is just what I mean Chris. You trot these remarks out like
the finest couture modeled by some strutting starlet, and we're all supposed
to gawp and admire. In fact, the less actual material you put on the poor
girl, the more we gawp and admire. Well, what about when she's cold after
the show and has to walk home in the rain? Will it be one of your
fashionably scanty numbers she throws over her shoulders, or will it be
something a bit more substantial, something that actually does the job?
CHRIS WROTE:
identifying an object includes a state of identifying when it is NOT present
as well as a state of seeing an object's 'opposite'.
ELEPHANT:
Well you are certainly onto something there. In my veiw, the consequence of
disallowing the negation that is implied with every assertion would be a
kind of lifeless monism, where only one thing can exist or be refered to
because there can be nothing that it is not. Parmenides has been down this
road, I beleive. OK, great greek. But what the hell has this got to do
with harmony and neurology?
CHRIS WROTE: IOW the set of all possible expressions contains BOTH A and ~A.
This is identifiable as a BOTH/AND state and from a LOCAL perspective cannot
exist 'at the same time'.
ELEPHANT WROTE: Sorry, but "at the same time" *is* just what we mean by
"local
perspective": there is no local perspective *towards* "at the same time".
That an object cannot be both F and ~F at the same time is something
universally true.
CHRIS WROTE
Yes and no :-) It is our method of analysis that cannot cope with this in
that the F/~F exists as a set of potentials within the set of possible
expressions within a mode of interpretation.
ELEPHANT:
So very Puzzling. English version please.
CHRIS WROTE:
For example, in the human brain
we can interpret data as EITHER object OR relationship OR a MIX of both. We
do this in that the hemispheres of the brain, in general, operate according
to different processes such that at any one moment BOTH can be active and so
cause a paradox. We resolve this by oscillating in that you brain is always
oscillating between left and right frames of reference such that static
BOTH/AND states are converted to DYNAMIC EITHER/OR states. We can then label
these states (e.g. the concept of a PART requires (a) the concept of an
object and (b) the concept of that object having a relationship to a
'greater' object (aka the whole).)
ELEPHANT:
OK. That's not puzzling at all. No it's perfectly clear what your
justification is for abandoning the law of non-contradiction. It is
perfectly clearly the peice of the junkiest junk science I have ever come
accross (and you've got some competition boy, boy have you got some
competion). There is absolutly no evidence for what you are now saying
about assertion and negation being localied to brain hemispheres, and I
personally doubt that you are capable of translating it into terms which
could make it evidentially testable. *What* is it that you picture
oscillating between left and right hemispheres? Tell me that, please god
tell me that Chris, what *are* you talking about? Anyway, I thought all
this left/right business went out of fashion years ago.
CHRIS WROTE:
This seperate functionality of hemispheres causing a paradox was seen in the
original work on cutting the corpus callosum of people to stop epilepsy. One
person described how both 'halves' of her body physically fought each other
in the process of selecting clothes to wear! (A vs ~A)
ELEPHANT:
Look Chris, if you think that the cruel heartless mindless things that were
done to the insides of peoples heads in those days have anything whatsoever
to say in Neuro-psychology now, they you are further gone than I had
imagined. If you cut someones brain in half, their functionality might just
be reduced. This tells you absolutely nothing at all about the mechanism by
which this comes about. Look, it's as if you based your theory of the
functioning of an internal combustion engine on the results of attacking it
with a slegehammer. For ****s sake.
I'm sorry, but if that's all this amounts to, then I have nothing to add.
Goodbye.
Pzeph
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