JONATHAN DISCUSSES PROPHECY
Hi Fintan, Squad,
FINTAN:
>And I am a Prophet of that Renaissance.
>I am on the road to Sainthood. And have been for some time.
>That's why I get up so many people's noses.
>Saints always have.
It seems abundantly clear that the Lila Squad wants to remain a
"non-prophet" organization. What are we, Canon fodder? Nevertheless, I
find it amusing that Fintan's DYNAMISM has proved to be excessive.
Still, I have to agree with Diana when she writes:-
>I don't think I'm being too vain if I point out that
>I'm a little bit better at dialectics than he is.
Simply put, Fintan has been a BAD, BAD boy. He didn't follow the rules.
But the real point of this post is to discuss what prophecy really is.
Prophets predict the future. I've written a lot in the past about
prediction. A search of my past ramblings turned up dozens of posts
about prediction, mostly about scientific forecasting, extrapolation
etc. I also found the following:-
<<<<
This is why TROY ...
>can talk to [his] mom about politics and predict nearly exactly what
>she will "think".
>>>>
If prophecy is prediction, then we are all prophets!
To go into this a bit deeper, a prophet has to be able to imagine the
future.
FINTAN (towards the end of his post "The Meaning in Her Silk-Print
Dress"):-
<<<<
The METAPHYSICS OF MEANING (MoM) says that Pattern Recognition
Algorithm(DQ) is the compliment of Pattern(SQ) and both are the
product of a Quality event. . ...
>>>>
Since Fintan has credited me with the "Patterns" idea which launched
his MoM, let me clear up a disagreement I have with the above
formulation. The pattern vs. recognition came up in our definition of
the object-subject split. A MoQ (or MoM) should start only with pattern.
Pattern is pattern and pattern recognition is pattern. Compare two
patterns and the comparison itself is pattern. It's all PATTERN and its
all static quality. DQ is the driving force for pattern creation. I
agree that pattern creation and pattern recognition go hand in hand
(SQ-DQ interdependence), but DQ itself is non-algorithmic.
The reason I bring this up is because prophecy or IMAGining the future
is all about patterns.
IMAGE=PATTERN=VALUE=QUALITY - it all fits.
Ancient man must have had some imagination. Dreams are imagination. Even
animals have imagination. At some stage, a human cut himself on a sharp
rock and IMAGINED he could use sharp rocks to cut animal flesh. His
prophecy turned out to be correct, and everyone else copied. We all
learn how to make similar simple improvisations - even chimpanzees can
be taught. But the first man who did this was an intellectual pioneer.
I'm talking about what have happened hundreds of millennia ago - long
before language and logic. But language provided tremendous tools to
enhance imagination. Language provides symbols (words) to break down and
subdivide patterns and rebuild new structures. With language, everyone
can be a prophet.
Now where does logic fit into all this? Logic provided a way of testing
pattern combinations for consistency. There is almost always more than
one possible combination, but logic allows us to throw out the
impossible (inconsistent). The dialectical system uses logic to detect
inconsistencies (contradictions). But logic itself does not provide the
SYNTHESIS which transcends the contradiction. That is a product of
IMAGINATION. Our greatest minds are a source of that imagination. They
are our greatest scientists and artists.
Jonathan
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