Re: [Fis] The timings of meaning

Ted Goranson wrote:

> Steven Ericsson Zenith wrote on 3/27/04:
>
>> I am a little confused here. You draw a distinction between CHEMICAL
>> ENTITIES and PHYSICAL ONES - can you clarify the distinction?
>
>
> Previously, we have discussed the fact of layers. There seem to be
> some species who form systems that result in new systems. So for
> instance elementary particles would form systems that result in a new
> layer of primitives, say molecules. The comment was intended to note
> the two layers. But I am not at all sure what the elements _really_
> are. Probably, the ones we use (elementary particles and molecules)
> are artifacts of abstraction techniques of ours, not theirs.

I missed this discussion, and would not want you drag you over old
ground but the distinction remains unclear especially in the light of
your later comments here. It is not clear to me, for example, how this
distinction - which appears to be an "intradistinction" (and does not
make immediate sense to me) - relates to the "extradistinction" between
"abstractions that, say, cells use and those that we use in reasoning
about what they use" (your words). In this context, the notions
"elementary particles" and "molecules" fall where? And how would you know?

I suggest the line can be drawn in both causes - but to believe that
either presents an absolute of nature could limit further consideration
should by chance we be wrong. So I guess that I focus on your "there
seems to be some species." The hairs on my neck prickle, however, when
anyone says "a new layer of primitives" - I find the obvious
contradiction alarming - at least initially :-)

Indeed, I get itchy with a notion that suggests the fundamental nature
of information changes at these "levels" - although I will agree that
such a notion is worthy of consideration in the cause of unifying
quantum and classical views. However, for me to get any comfort with
the idea I will have to hear a causal explanation - what is it that you
supposed changes the nature of information?

>> You appear to be saying that Schr�dinger and Whitehead did not
>> understand this distinction...
>
>
> Yes, ... I believe is that they hadn't stumbled upon the right set of
> abstractions.

I observe that Schr�dinger appears to have made physicists better and
more prolific cartoonists of than they were before.

> ....
>
>> Perhaps, but unlikely IMHO - the effective distance between set
>> theory and category theory is insignificant.
>> Further, while I agree in principle about the two vocabularies you
>> identify, one has to recognize that they necessarily coexist and that
>> they are unified in the vehicle of communication. These vocabularies
>> do not exist independent of the conscious entity that manipulates them.
>> Whereas, the vocabulary that I understood this group here to be
>> concerned with is the abstract vocabulary of information in nature.
>> IOW, how information works.
>
>
> I must have really been clumsy in my words. I thought I clearly made
> the differentiation between abstractions that, say, cells use and
> those that we use in reasoning about what they use.

Again, cells use abstraction? And when they do, they do so it ways
fundamentally different from you and I? I need to hear that argument.

> I may be mistaken (I often am) but I understand FOL, indeed all the
> common logics of science to be set-based. Category logics are
> something else altogether. There can be mappings, but these are
> incomplete in interesting details.

I assume you mean here that there can be mappings between "category
logics" and other models of logic - your wording is difficult here
because I am tempted to respond that First Order Logic is also
incomplete in interesting ways.

I am cautious about computational panaceas.

> Categories are the abstractions of the process of abstracting and
> superficially seem apt for reflexive logic of the type that would deal
> with the abstractions we need.

I do not see categories that way. Give me an example.

>
> Or did I misunderstand you?

Perhaps it is I that has misunderstood.

With respect,
Steven

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Received on Tue Mar 30 11:19:39 2004