roachboy

pigglet:
interesting. responses....

i am not really arguing a straight relativist kind of line. i realize it looks that way as a function of the emphasis (in terms of length at least) in what i have posted on framing matters. part of that has to do with the multiplicity of addressees in this thread, really---the stuff about pascal was a riff based on stuff that knife missle had posted, which refered to the "wager" in general--so i took off from that.

but things are not so simple.

1. we can know things about the world. it is not the case that we simply see the image of the world implied by the frame of reference, as if that frame was wholly self-enclosed and self-enclosing---but what we can know is ALSO conditioned by these frames because they enable the production of knowledge---background assumptions, ideological and/or philsophical assumptions lay behind the definition of objects of inquiry, how they are posited, what linkages there are between these objects and surrounding phenomena; they shape observation/experimentation at the level of definition of variables (again), procedures within experiments and (particularly) the way in which the results are generalized etc.

it may be that it is because there is information that gets generated about the world that the roles and power of framing assumptions tends to disappear in "normal science"--or in routinized interrogations of the world more broadly. well that and the way in which different modes of thinking are separated from each other in the states in particular (a function of reification, or the bureaucratization of knowledge...at one level unavoidable, at another unavoidable but with conequences)

there is where the references to atlan come in, and here these references also function as a shorthand for a much larger body of work...anyway, the basic claim he makes concerning the question of fit between phenomena that are observed or modelled at one scale and phenomena that are observed to modelled at, say, what appears to be an adjacent scale follow from implicit philosophical assumptions--the easiest way to see them in general is as following from a determinist ontology--that is for something to be, it must be deterimate---like a thing---the predicates that define it inhere in the object itself---if you are talking about a system, the default assumption that links to this is that systems are self-enclosed and self-enclosing and are their functioning is primarily a question of repetition of internal characteristics. the counter is that (a) biological systems are not accurately characterized in this manner at all scales and if that is the case then it follows that (b) a determinist ontology cannot simply be assumed in orienting interrogation of the world simpyl becauseon its basis one is inclined to impose criteria that hobble that interrogation so:

(c) it makes sense to reconsider the framing assumptions--and here i start to move into a broader area (there are tons of references i could give if you like--like the work of francesco varela on "chaotic systems" (a term i dont like particularly, but which functions) and the brain activity that underpins cognition or the work of cornelius castoriadis (who studied with for a while))---anyway, it makes sense to consider a partial determinacy model at the ontological level rather than defaulting to a determinist ontology as folk in general do. partial determinacy opens up space for thinking about the processes whereby meaning is fashioned in ways that determinist ontology does not--partial determinacy is about the processes of bringing-into-being as the bringing-into-meaning of phenomena, such that you really cannot separate the objects defined from the processes of definition. this is the kind of stuff i work on in 3-d...but mostly with reference to social-historical phenomena---my stuff moves this framework in other directions than does atlan. anyway, there we are.


(2) conversation about this kind of stuff in the context of a thread like this is necessary quite abstract, and the topic is pitched such that if you want to move from area to area--which you would do because you want to link something about the tendency to believe in some god to features of how we tend to understand the world more generally--you need to be even more abstract than usual.

so the linkage back to this religion thing would go this way:

you could say that humans operate through a vast range of frameworks and that these frameworks can be differentiated by the status, density and complexity of feedback loops provided them by the way in which they bring themselves into contact with phenomena that are beyond themselves.

all them are conditioned by effects generated by the language they use, the rules that condition their relation to that language etc...a version of the previous point is simplest here: the extent to which these structuring relations carve up information generated varies with the type of feedback loop, or with the type of observation or processing being done.

(as i am writing this, i am getting bothered by restricting this to language as i am doing--the only reason for it is that i am trying to explain something about this view in a messageboard...it is a constraint. work within the constraint. it is irritating, this constraint, and a messageboard provides no space for breaking because it IS the constraint)

christianity seems to me oriented entirely by assumptions particular to inherited ontology and the metaphysics that is of a piece with it. it seems to me to be entirely about the structuring characteristics of naming---for example, the universe is singular because the noun "universe" generates that singularity. there is a single god because the name god entails singularity. that god is the inverse of ourselves--we die and so are finite, so god is eternal and/or infinite. we of course have no idea of the contents of the infinite, but act as though we do because we operate through a space carved up by the implications of the words we use.

that's why if i were to be a christian i would be a nominalist. people believe in a world of names, because thre are names, because one of the things we do is naming...pascal was a nominalist, nietsche was a nominalist....the categories that structure christianity are generated via processes of semantic inversion, they refer to the processes that generated them, not to anything outside them.

the notion that the world is fully knowable is an illusion that is a function of inherited ontology. now to say that is not to claim that we know nothing--that is part of the same logic, just turned on its head--rather we know the world as we frame it, and these frames do not and cannot result in certainty--BUT they can and do result in knowledge----BUT that knowledge is not and cannot be complete, any more than a formal language system can be complete (this could slide into related matters concerning how and why formal systems are not groundable, are not closed and cannot be---problems of the relation to axoims to the proofs they enable for example, or the effects of stuff like godels theorem for mathematical systems--but no matter)

we DO know something of the world, and we CAN know more and know it differently and over time probably will know it differently.
we can organize data, we can work out criteria that let us arrive at judgments, we can develop criteria that enable us to come to agreements about that knowledge across particular frames of reference--but that agreement is about the power of the arguments, not about certainty.
what we know is provisional, really.
this does not mean that we know nothing.
it just means that interrogatin should not stop--and that philosophical interrogation is of a piece with other types, and also should not stop, simply because philosophy gives *one* route to isolating the macro-scale assumptions that orient how local systems operate, what they produce and how they produce it.)

we MAKE the meanings that we think we find. a view of these processes shaped by a partial determinacy model would prevent you from making any strict separation between information about the world and the procedures through which it was generated.

criminy. another long fucking post.
once again, i am not sure how clear this all is simply because it is done within a constraint that i do not find particularly generative.
this is why i generally do not go in this direction in tfp-land: i dont think the format allows for it. this is not about the community, but about the form the community assumes to operate.
this is also one reason i do not use caps--it reminds me not to go here in this context by keeping my voice informal.

maybe now you see why.
i dunno.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite