Date: Tue, 18 Aug 1998 16:32:02 NZST
Subject: Re: PKF: Walking On


While you tried to make things clearer for me I get the strange
feeling that I'm in to deep. As a result all I can do to see if I
understood you correctly is to try to paraphrase what you wrote and
add some thoughts of my own in the process. I hope that in doing this
I don't loose to much of what you were trying to say.

Alexander wrote 

>To be doing something is in part to be locked out of what
>you are not doing. This is a matter of containment and definition. On
>a behavioural level, I am speaking of a kind of fluid referent (much
>in the way we speak of kinetic energy) and seperately of a certain
>level of 'sureness' or 'confidence' in the brain to which the fluid
>referent pertains (much in the way we speak of potential energy).
>There would not be a flux of increase and decrease as the one
>decreases and the other increases however as in physics, but there
>would be what we might call a Cartesian axis at which the one goes
>off and the other goes on. Bla Bla.

When we extend ourselves into the world the world takes on the form of
our extension this by necessity closes off some avenues of
thought/action and opens up others. 

I'm a bit unsure of this summation as I am unclear on some of your
terms. These are fluid referent, and Cartesian axis.plus from later in
your reply quantity structure. Could you expand on your meaning of
these?

>In any case modal logic can be seen almost certainly as a reification
>of our cognitive perceptions of the modifications occur in and on the
>conditions of human life. (All I have to do to know this is to think
>of some great works of literature, Dreiser or Tolstoy for example.)
>This is a warning-light for any modal logicians out there. An
>argument -AT- cannot really take a property-predicate or a modal
>operator externally (cannot have a predicate or modality assigned to
>it, or even posited of it based on the most scientifically accurate
>observation! -- although we depend on and trust the scientists to
>make as accurate approximations as possible, but this is still not
>ideal and is not in accoradance with the facts of the world). An
>argument -AT- has internal properties, and if we are speaking of a modal
>operator, the internal constitution of the argument will decide the
>one and only modalities (or modificational combinations of
>modalities) according to which this argument BEHAVES. 

Arguments about the essence of things as in for example formal logic
are a reification/thingification of perception. In logic declarations
about things behave according to certain rules which themselves are
based on the form of the argument, thus argument is never completely
context free.

>Again with regard to let's say my ex-girlfriend's sister's marriage
>to a Frenchman: Each of us is behaving as no other human has ever
>behaved before or ever will, except for ourselves. I may have behaved
>as I am behaving now, but no one else ever has or ever will. Thus
>behavior takes on a color or mien which is entirely significant and
>exclusionary, as perhaps a fluid referent. You can picture a quantity
>structure consisting of material and time. (Rather than speaking of a
>Cartesian product structure I much prefer to speak of a quantity
>structure. It is much more permissive.) It is the same when I posit
>three quantity structures in the universe, x, y, and z, for which
>there is a single function f of the three q-structures, and then say
>that there value u for which u=f(x,y,z) is our sole yardstick. We
>have every right to change the values of our three q-structures *[on
>paper or on the field or for some range of assumptions holding up a
>policy], but we should discern the consequences first (this goes to
>BillR's lucid comments). (Caveat: What exactly did happen when the
>British divided up sub-Saharan Africa?)

All behaviour is unique in much the same way as Daniel C Dennett(?)
argues in "The Mind's Eye" in his story "What's it like to be a bat?"
that all experience is unique. We can experience what it is like for
me to be a bat (say) but not what it is like for a bat to be a bat. It
is the similar with things, we can posit a function u=f(x,y,z) and make
predictions for various values of x,y,z  often they will come off but
the world doesn't always behave according to our model, as you say
"what exactly did happen when ..." We can't ever state for sure the 
cause and effect.

>So I can write: "Why my exgirlfriend's sister's marriage to a 
>Frenchman?" "Why that mole on my buttocks?" The first does not
>permit of a heriditary explanation, except (if someone should wish to
>do so -- crass endeavor) from a very wide sociological perspective.
>The second permits of an hereditary explanation, I should think. The
>first is behavior. The second is not, although it could be seen as an
>aesthetic instrument when viewed by the right person or persons.

Some things are explainable some are not. Sometimes it is a matter of
data and sometimes it simply comes down to perception.

>Now on with this idea of changing values and consequences with
>regard to the counterfactual: With proportional theories it is a
>simple matter to turn them upside down, especially where the evidence
>is sensitive to the state of technological development which the
>theory is working in (e.g. Malthus on population and food supply).

>Proportional theories are easy to turn upside down when one 
>considers the syncategorematic nature of the interpretation
>of natural phenomena. What would the world look like without
>the two (false, ie instituted) values of scarcity, 
>i.e. poverty and hunger? Malthusian thinking and
>ratios assumed/posited between population and food supply
>would be turned upside down or equalized, and hopefully we
>as human beings would find it a node of contrition for such a
>bastardized way of scientifically BRANDING the world in relation to
>human beings and human beings in relation to the world. To be fairer
>to Malthus however, if you read deeper into his paper you will see
>that he did indeed accept just such syncategorematic elements vis a
>vis the shifting tide of social conditions and the class structures
>as the drivers of the shifts.

Finally a comment: Often it is only with distance/time that theories
become transparent. However even then they can make a come back
wearing, if you like different clothes. I'm thinking here of Bills
argument about the Third Way and also of what we in New Zealand term
the New Right. Both it can be argued are recreations of an earlier
age.

TTFN




Mike Eathorne-Gould
(michael-AT-sol.otago.ac.nz)
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