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 données
immédiates de la conscience from 1889 between
experienced time ("durée") and the model of time oriented
towards things in space (Zeno). By the way, Bergson writes in a late
essay (Durée et simultanéité, 1922) that his conception of "durée"
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 organisés" with the inorganic,
i.e. between evolution (in the sense of a creative mouvement *durée 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