Re: Fwd: Some questions about the nature of informational theories

Jerry,

thanks for your questions and comments
and sorry for puzzling you!

> Rafeal puzzles me when he writes:
>
> "But finally, philosophically speaking,
> the clarification of the *how* does not explain
> *time* itself."
>
> At issue in this sentence, it seems to me, is the reification of an
> abstraction.
>

I should have written *phenomenologically speaking* and I use
now the term phenomenology in the sense of the philosophical
phenomenology aus developed by Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty
Bergson and others. The key point is (very shortly...) to *save the
phenomena*
(Greek: *sozein ta phainomena*), which means to see what appears
AS such, i.e. without saying:

A follows (is the cause of) from B

und thus directing your attention from B to A, and ... not seeing A any
more.

In a sense you are right: this methodological option (!) is a kind of
*reification*
i.e. of looking at things themselves but not of creating a thing,
for instance time, which is indeed no-thing..., and it is the opposite
(but not contradictory) way to de-ification (sorry for this word), or
reductionism.

You can see (!) an example of phenomenology of time for instance
in Bergson when he distinguishes in his Essai sur les donn�es
imm�diates de la conscience from 1889 between
experienced time ("dur�e") and the model of time oriented
towards things in space (Zeno). By the way, Bergson writes in a late
essay (Dur�e et simultan�it�, 1922) that his conception of "dur�e"
has been *confirmed* by Einsteins theory of (special) relativity...
He also considers that the dualism of universal time ("temps spatial")
and *multiple* time is confirmed by Einstein's conception of
four-dimensional space.

See also Heidegger's difference between the *Now-time* (Jetzt-Zeit)
consisting of identical now-points (the concept of time we use when
we measure time) and the 'ek-statical time' i.e. time
differentiated in its 'extases' future/present/past).
We exist *in* time (better: as time) (similarly: as space...)
and because time-as-lived (and space) is so *near* to us, we mostly oversee
it
and look at things *in* time and say: we can count time, *reifying* it (!)
following the
positions of things (*res*) in their before and after).

I am not argueing now neither in favor not against Bergson and/or
Heidegger or whatever, but just trying to *make a difference* on how we can
approach
phenomena and particularly time.

Following Bergson we can distinguish between two different information
concepts,
one more *creative* (following Wolfgang's idea...) and the other one more
abstract, or, to put it in another terminology, one we could speak about
*endo information* and *exo information* (following Koichiro's thinking)...
not in order to build a new/old dualism, but to see (!) how both concepts
are interwoven
in what Bergson calls "entretissu d'etres organis�s" with the inorganic,
i.e. between evolution (in the sense of a creative mouvement *dur�e vraie*
and a pure "deroulement" or spatial time, which is indeed, just an
abstraction
(but a useful one too!)

Sorry, if this is still puzzling you... probably it is a sympton that we are
approaching a common problem. It is still puzzling for me too.

kind regards

Rafael

> In what *sense* should an abstract concept be gratuitously endowed
> with a self, with *encasement*, with *embodiment*?
>
> Clearly, molecular biological communication comes encased in symbols
> that are meaningfully encased in the *logic* of the natural sciences
> - relational symbols that create the essential relations for natural
> systems and intervolutionary developments.
>
> To what extent can one *substitute* the *languaging* of *time* for
> the nature of matter?
>
Received on Thu Jan 23 21:11:51 2003