Re: Emergence (test)

From: Acme Diagnostics (LFinezapthis_at_partpostmark.net)
Date: 12/23/04 

Date: 23 Dec 2004 13:10:07 -0600

Albert <albertwagner@cox.net> wrote:
>Acme Diagnostics wrote:
>> "Hlafordlaes" <hlafordlaes@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>In the beginning there was a system. The system had elements and
>>>relations, points and distances. Sentience emerged from the
>>>combinatorial system following its interactions into aggregations and
>>>subsystems. Subjectivity and objectivity is a duality created by
>>>sentience. Meaning is the whole, which sentience cannot *grok.* All
>>>else becomes a problem of resolving the duality, which I haven't done
>>>yet!
>>
>> That sounds right, except I would say that objectivity is
>> reality, and subjectivity is guesses about reality. I think that
>> it can be demonstrated that we lack the means to imagine reality,
>> let alone guess it, for instance the inability to imagine the
>> answer to the question, "What is outside of that?" when asked
>> enough times. <break>

>How could you demonstrate that we lack the means to imagine
>reality if you could not even imagine what reality is so as to
>demonstrate it's unimaginability.?

Because, for one thing, I don't have to imagine something to
demonstrate that something exists. My demonstration stops exactly
at the word "something." That in itself is not "imagining." The
Ancients knew that stars were "something," but they couldn't
imagine what they in fact were (i.e. to be a case of reality).

Next, if you can imagine something in answer to the "What is
outside of that?" question, then you haven't met my requirement
of "enough times" as stated.

For another thing, I only have to show that our only thinking
tool is limited, and that thinking encompasses imagining.
Logic is the only thinking tool we have that satisfies:

1) The "things that work" test. This is required because
imagining things that in fact exist, i.e. cases of reality, is
imagining things that work (in the largest sense of "work.")

2) The "things that have definitions" test. I weakly assert that
this is required to qualify things as "thought" about things that
actually exist (i.e. cases of reality).

There are logic paradoxes at this level of description at least.
(I think I contrived one above with the "What is outside of
that?" question, or at least with the "enough times" trick).
Thus, logic is limited for imagining every last case of reality.

For another thing, even if your question (inferenced into the
assertion "We must imagine reality to demonstrate
that we cannot imagine (every last case of *1) reality") is true,
and if my "What is outside of that" question results in something
that can't be imagined, then to reconcile our two true but
contradictory logic statements, we must demonstrate that logic
breaks down at least at this level of description.

And besides, my client doesn't own a dog!

I invite further testing of any of these imaginings. <g>

<pulled out of sequence>
>Have you really thought this through?

No. How could I? And even if I could, I don't know anything
for sure.

>> </break> ... The whole would be existence. I don't think the
>> whole could be "meaning" because that requires a point-of-view.
>> But existence would include all "meanings."

*1 The above, added to "in the beginning" at the very top,
supplies context for meaning of "reality" in the first part being
existence, i.e. all reality, i.e. "every last case of reality.")

>"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the
>range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally
>impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it."
> -- George Orwell as Syme in "1984"

Great quote. Appropriate here too if words need to have meanings
to qualify as "thought" in our context which I think is Orwell's
context too.

Larry

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