Delivered-To: moderator for apm-discuss@rivertown.net
From: "Steve Rosen" <ROSEN-S@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
Organization: The College of Staten Island
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 13:26:38 -0400
Subject: [APM-Discuss]: starting points for science/math/logic section
X-Pmrqc: 1
Priority: normal
X-Mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.1 (R1a)
Message-Id: <74D53F73852@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 3172
Status: RO
For those of us planning to participate in the conference section on
science, logic, and mathematics, I would like to suggest a few
STARTING POINTS that seem to have emerged from our dialogue of the
past several months. I believe that each of the following in some way
begins to address the question of what it might mean to "come after"
postmodernism in scientific inquiry. Each may therefore serve as a
point of departure that can be further developed and articulated as
we move toward the November 15th meeting of our section. Of course,
many other starting points are possible and all suggestions are
welcome. Add what you like.
---The logico-mathematical discourse of science has its own
structures and characteristics, its own coherences and stabilities,
even though it arises from a context that cannot itself be reduced to
mathematics or logic.
---There is a relationship of reciprocity and feedback between
logical/mathematical form and its not-strictly-formal context, to the
enhancement of both. Form advances to a certain limit point, falters,
gets fed back into its "in-formal" context, then re-emerges, going
further than it did before. The cycle can then repeat.
---Historically, modernist scientific activity has taken place in
oblivion of its "informal" context, thereby giving primacy to form.
Postmodernism sends the signal that adherence to form cannot
continue. Science can "come after" postmodernism by attending to the
context from which its forms arise, and incorporating that context
into its very form-ulations, *without reducing" context to form.
---A hermeneutic approach to science, such as the one inspired by
Heidegger's philosophy, is postmodern in opposing the Enlightenment
view of science that assumes universal coherence, and is a successor
to the postmodern in that it challenges postmodernism's emphasis on
the loss of coherence. The hermeneutic alternative is concerned with
the generation, transmission, and fulfillment of scientific meanings
within the lifeworld.
---(From a conference participant who has been unable to join in our
preliminary email exchanges:)
Postmodernism's challenge to science can be understood in terms of
the role played by *time*. Postmodernism fragments the idealized
global time of Newton, Kant, and Einstein. To come after
postmodernism in scientific activity, we must find a way to
synchronize our local clocks in the absence of classical and
modernist ideals.
* * * *
The foregoing is only intended to get the ball rolling. I would love
to see comments, reactions, corrections, and further suggestions. It
does seem a good idea to get started in advance of the conference,
since we could not expect to make meaningful headway on the
specific issues that concern us in the single day of the conference
that will be devoted to our section.
Steve Rosen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 19:38:10 +0900
From: koichiro matsuno/7129 <kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: starting points for science/math/logic section
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
In his recent posting on Starting Points for Science etc, Steve
Rosen contrasts logical/mathematical form with its-not-strictly
formal context. This contrast may invite a serious rethinking
on the role the modernist science has assumed. Modernist science
comes to experience its crisis when it becomes extremely context-
sensitive. Deterministic chaos met in classical mechanics is
a well-known example. The modernist science does not carry with
itself the capacity of ameliorating such a pathological sensitivity
to the context. Even quantum mechanics is no exception in this
regard. Postmodernist appraisal of the plasticity of the context
should be taken seriously even in the practice of empirical
sciences.
Modernist science is quite vulnerable to its pathological
sensitivity to the context, and there is no panacea for the
treatment within this framework. It could be by no means an irony
to ask a help from a postmodernist mindset to rescue the goods
in modernist science. What would be required to treat serious
deseases found in the modernist science and to save the good
part of the latter might be to identify a vicious virus infecting
the otherwise healthy body of modernist science. That is, to my
mind, the notion of time, since time is a most significant
attribute specifying the context.
Although it may seem natural to assume that everybody in our
world shares the same and common time, this globally synchronous
time shared by all looks like a form of force set by a sort of
decree. Postmodernists are right when they insist that there is
no such authority to tell others to conform unanimously to the
global time. Nonetheless, we cannot dispense with the notion of
time, otherwise we cannot talk about our world and its history
in a manner we can share among ourselves. At issue is how to get
the global time without recourse to the decree to be declared by
an unfathomable authority. Modernist science could be metamorphosed
into the one surviving postmordernist criticisms only when it can
come up with the global time in a bottom-up manner instead of the
top-down.
Koichiro Matsuno
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 14:02:16 -0400
From: "Steve Rosen" <ROSEN-S@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: Process metaphysics
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Response to Mark Bickhard from Steve Rosen:
Mark Bickhard's call for a dialectical, multi-level process
metaphysics sounds right to me. I feel it is descriptive of what
I too have been attempting to realize in my own efforts in the
foundations of science. Nevertheless, as I think Mark would agree
(judging from what he has written), we need to be sensitive and
responsive to post-modernism's critique of metaphysics as such. But
also, at the same time, we do want to "move on" from postmodernism.
To me this means not just looking to replace the abstract
universality of the old metaphysics with mere particularity; in fact,
this oppostion of the universal and particular itself seems
characteristic of the state of affairs that prevails WITHIN the old
metaphysics. Then, what will come after the old universals and old
particulars, in coming after postmodernism? Or, putting the
question in Mark's terms, what do we mean by a thoroughly
dialectical, APM "process metaphysics" (assuming we DON'T mean
modernist versions of process metaphysics like that oferred by
Whitehead)?
I would like to propose that an APM process metaphysics would be one
that is CONCRETELY SELF-REFERENTIAL. This "concrete self-reference"
-- what Levin, Sheets-Johnstone, Dreyfus and others might describe as
"coming from the body," from Gendlin's "pre-separated multiplicity;"
what Sundararajan would call a referring that speaks from and
preserves lived subjectivity; what Falk would call a "threshold
sensing" -- is not found in modernism or postmodernism, any more
than in classicism. It is an idea, a *process*, for which there
is "no name in any philosophy," as Merleau-Ponty said of the *flesh*.
Steve Rosen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Thu, 25 Sep 1997 11:31:45 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert P Crease <RCREASE@ccmail.sunysb.edu>
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: Replies to Bickhard, Rosen, Solomon, etc.
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
State University of New York at Stony Brook
Stony Brook, NY 11794-3750
Robert P Crease
Philosophy
516 632-7570
25-Sep-1997 11:10am EDT
FROM: RCREASE
TO: Remote Addressee ( _apm-discuss@rivertown.net )
Subject: Replies to Bickhard, Rosen, Solomon, etc.
Replies to Bickhard, Rosen, Solomon.
I wanted to reply to the theme of "a dialectic between culture and
nature," and in particular to the comments with respect to "emergence." I just
guest-edited a special issue, just out, of MAN AND WORLD (30:3). One of the
chief advantages of the hermeneutical approach to science is that it avoids the
predicament of having to choose between the assumption that somewhere in nature
lies concealed a fixed, stable order, and on the other hand the view that all
order is imposed from the outside, and that any patterns we seen in it represent
merely an artifact of the forms, conventions, history, traditions and interests
with which it is approached. The faults of the former have been thoroughly
explored from Kuhn to the social constructivists. But to subscribe to the
alternate view is to imagine nature as simply a cultural-historical idea, which
makes research incapable of accessing anything but human constructions.
Gendlin's article in that volume (which is already on the website) is
insightful in that it allows us to begin to develop terms with which to think
beyond the double negative involved in denying both alternatives. Forms,
conventions, and interests are always involved in our dealings with nature,
without that entailing arbitrariness. What we get back from our dealings,
experiments, etc., is not arbitrary, because nature is really engaged, but
differently, by different activities. "Although the empirical is responsive to,
not separable from our procedures and concepts, its roles are independent of
them in certain specifiable respects."
In reply to Solomon, I think we should be extremely wary about seeking
enlightenment from theoretical physics alone. And I speak as someone who has
written an (albeit nontechnical) account of the development of the standard
model of elementary particle physics. As I argued (following many insights of
Heelan) in THE PLAY OF NATURE: EXPERIMENTATION AS PERFORMANCE, we go astray when
we think of science as "all about" theory. It is simply a mistake to think that
scientific entities appear, in the laboratory, as present-at-hand objects
thematized by a particular understanding of Being. Rather, we have to
understand them as emerging in the interplay (responsive order....) between
theory and the (experimental) context. That is true even -- and especially --
in the case of quantum mechanical situations, as Heelan argued in his papers on
the subject, and as I also discussed.
Bob Crease
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 1997 10:20:04 +0900
From: kmatsuno@voscc.nagaokaut.ac.jp
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: Replies to Bickhard, Rosen, Solomon, etc.
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Some thoughts on the reply by Bob Crease; from Koichiro Matsuno
It seems to me that contemporary physics, especially its
theoretical edifice gets into trouble. Some help from APM
philosophy (a la Steve Rosen) may desperately be needed. My
perception in this regard rests upon the observation that
theoretical physics as we understant it today is quite
incompetent in distinguishing between experience and
experienced. In other words, many practitioners in physics
still try to dominate experience by what has been experienced.
Consider, for instance, a clock to read time out of it.
An impartial "objective" observer, who may be a hard-liner
physicist, may be confident in reading time out of a
Universal Clock and in leaving nothing to be disturbed by
the very act of the reading. Such a Universal Clock can find
its legitimacy, perhaps, only in the record that has already
been experienced and that remains there as it is as being
indifferent to whoever reads the Clock. In contrast, any clock
appearing in our empirical world assumes its mover and reader(s).
The readers are further responsible for moving other clocks, and
vice versa. The dyadic relationship between a clock and an
impartial reader may be okay in the experienced, but experience
itself assumes the triadic relationship among a clock, its
mover and reader(s). Merleau-Ponty seems to call our attention
to this problem in his own way. But, I'm not sure whether his
message could have reached physicists at large. At issue may be
how to communicate with physicists in a mutually productive
manner.
Koichiro Matsuno
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 13:05:44 -0400
From: "Steve Rosen" <ROSEN-S@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: Reply to Matsuno
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
In his reflection on physics, time, and the distinction between
experience and the experienced, Koichiro Matsuno said:
> The dyadic relationship between a clock and an
> impartial reader may be okay in the experienced, but experience
> itself assumes the triadic relationship among a clock, its
> mover and reader(s).
This strikes me as a valuable observation that I would like
to hear Koichiro expand on a little, and clarify.
Steve Rosen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 1997 15:20:58 +0900
From: kmatsuno@voscc.nagaokaut.ac.jp
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: Reply to Matsuno
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
On the difference between the experienced and experience
Steve Rosen referred to; from Koichiro Matsuno
Let me first say that physics as we [modernists] understand
it today does not distinguish between the present tense and
the present perfect tense, and then accepts the notion of
time in the manner of applying it to both tenses interchangeably.
Strict distinction between experience and the experienced does
not exist in their mind. On the other hand, postmodernists seem
to emphasize the significance of the mode of the present
progressive tense with very good reasons. And, those who
concern themselve with something coming after pomo may be
interested in how to accommodate those three tenses in a
manner mutually as consistent as possible.
In this regard, I have a following example. Suppose
"I walk through a crowd to aviod collisions with other people".
This is certainly different from
"I have walked through the crowd" or from
"I am walking through a crowd to avoid collisions with other
people".
When the author makes any monologic statement in the present
tense, he controls the whole situation as stated. Likewise, when a
scientist refers to the [experimentnal] record expressed in
the present perfect tense, he could oversee the whole record.
However, the things expressed in the present progressive tense
are a bit different. Although I am walking through a crowd to avoid
collisions with other people, they are also doing the same. That
is, I am walking through a crowd for collisions with others to be
avoided. When we express things in our empirical world in the
present progressive tense, there are necessarily at least two or
more than two agential actors to be involved.
Monologic statements expressed in the present tense or in the
present perfect can eliminate, though not always, those actors other
than the author from their discourse. In other words, physics as
a monologic enterprise can dismiss real, serious negotiation taking
place between participating agents. There is no time for doing such
negotiation within time of physics. If there is no agent other than
physicists in our world, dismissal of the things expressed exclusively
in the present progressive tense might be okay. Otherwise, one should
note that there are those dynamic attributes that can be appreciated
only in the present progressive tense.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with such a monologic enterprise
concerned with the things expressed either in the present tense or
in the present perfect insofar as it restrains itself from outstepping.
Dynamics unique to the present progressive tense is exclusively local,
participatory and agential. But, it is quite easy to slip away from
the present and the present perfect tense. (I'm not sure whether I
hit the mark.)
Koichiro Matsuno
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Steve Rosen" <ROSEN-S@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
Organization: The College of Staten Island
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 1997 13:36:10 -0400
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: Reply to Matsuno
Priority: normal
X-Mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.1 (R1a)
Message-Id: <9EDCF9A43F2@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 3434
Status: RO
Rosen replies to Matsuno
I found Koichiro Matsuno's 10/6 elaboration on his distinction between
"experience" and "experienced" to be helpful. He sees modern(ist)
science as dealing only with the "experienced," as assuming a
monological, retrospective posture in its manner of speaking and
thinking. Above and beyond the contents of its assertions, its
underlying style of operating -- reflected in the implicit
grammatical structure of its analyses -- is such that it tacitly
skips over the "present progressive tense." I want to construe this
as saying that contemporary natural science skips over what we might
call *process time*. This is the time that permits open
"negotiations" between "local agents" (as Matsuno would say); it is
the time of bodily sharing, of "dancing together" in such a way that
the dialectic of self and other can be consciously enacted. Whereas
the stance of modern(ist) science is monological, presupposing the
*non*dialectical self-other split, a science that would operate
in the "present progressive tense," in "process time," would be
*dialogical.* Correlating this with Gendlin, it's clear that being
dialogical means operating "from intricacy." All good and fine. But
where do we take it from here?
In an earlier post, Matsuno spoke of the need to open a constructive
dialogue with natural scientists. I agree that this is important and
suppose it means calling to the scientist's attention the need to
take process time seriously, to reconsider his/her neglect of the
"present progessive tense." But why should scientists do that? Do
they have any motivation to come down from their "panoptical tower"
and enter into embodied dialogue? I have been concerned about this
question for years. I don't believe the working scientist is affected
one iota by purely philosophical arguments or appeals, since these
seem quite remote from his or her immediate concerns. But I believe
it is possible to address specific crises WITHIN the sphere of
natural science in such a way that we show how -- as long as the
monological approach is maintained -- the crisis will prove
intractable. An example of such a crisis is the one we (Gendlin,
Sterner and I) discussed earlier, that involving the idea of the
*infinite*. Without rehashing that whole exchange, let me re-
approach it by just saying this: The appearance of the infinite in
the context of contemporary natural science can indeed be interpreted
as a symptom of crisis (as exemplified in quantum mechanics by the
cropping up of troublesome "infinities" in attempted solutions to
certain equations) and I believe it can be shown that the only way to
treat the symptom effectively is to move from old universal time to
process time. For now, I will not try to justify my claim or
elaborate further. The general point I'm trying to make is that, if
we wish to have a constructive dialogue with natural science, it
seems incumbant on us to show how science itself NEEDS an apm
approach.
Perhaps Patrick Heelan will want to comment on this. I'd be
interested in hearing him say where his hermeneutic approach to
natural science might fit here.
Steve Rosen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 12:14:49 +0900
From: koichiro matsuno/7129 <kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
Message-Id: <199710090314.MAA10399@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: Reply to Matsuno
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 3938
Status: RO
On Rosen's process time; from Koichiro Matsuno
Steve Rosen pointed out
>Whereas
>the stance of modern(ist) science is monological, presupposing the
>*non*dialectical self-other split, a science that would operate
>in the "present progressive tense," in "process time," would be
>*dialogical.* Correlating this with Gendlin, it's clear that being
>dialogical means operating "from intricacy." All good and fine. But
>where do we take it from here?
It is a serious and also a very good question. And, he continued
to say
>The appearance of the infinite in
>the context of contemporary natural science can indeed be interpreted
>as a symptom of crisis (as exemplified in quantum mechanics by the
>cropping up of troublesome "infinities" in attempted solutions to
>certain equations) and I believe it can be shown that the only way to
>treat the symptom effectively is to move from old universal time to
>process time.
In fact, the issue of process time is not simply a philosophical
idea, but also a genuine empirical matter to those scientists
involved in nitty-gritty in our everyday life. Although universal
time presumes the presence of a Universal Clock such as the one
Newton conceived of, process time does necessitate local clocks. For
instance, when a bacterium makes a tumbling movement of its body in
order to find attractants such as glucose, it certainly senses the
timing of initiating its tumbling movement while detecting depletion
of attractants in one direction. The bacterium would undoutedly refer
to a certain local clock to adjust its timing for initiating a new
movement, but it cannot be a Newtonian Universal Clock. Although a
biochemist can decipher how a bacterium initiates a tumbling
movement of its body as referring to a Universal Clock, this is
not the way the bacterium is doing its own business simply because
it doesn't know who Newton is.
The relationship between a Universal Clock and an impartial
modernist-scientist is quite pathological in the senses that the
Clock remains unaffected irrespective of whoever reads it and that
nothing happens to the scientist even if he reads it. In contrast,
every local clock appearing in our empirical arena acts upon and
is acted upon by other clocks. If there are three or more than
three clocks in our universe, all of them must be involved in the
movement of synchronizing with each other. Otherwise, the notion
of time applicable at least to the record in the mode of the present
perfect tense would be destroyed. Nonetheless, a consequence of any
synchronization between an arbitrary pair of clocks would cause
a certain asynchonicity to the third party, that can be identified
in the present progressive tense. A sequence of asynchronicity-
driving-synchronization-precipitating-further-asynchronicity would
become inevitable and could last indefinitely.
A real issue might be to identify what kind of clocks are
availble in our empirical world. A philosopher who could be
sympathetic to what is coming after postmodernism can understand
the presence of this empirical problem even if he does not have a
direct empirical means to attack it. In contrast, a modernist
scientist faithful to the presence of a Universal Clock is quite
metaphysical while having in his hand a great asset of armory to
attack empirical problems. We have already been making a huge
crossing over between philosophy and humanity on the one hand and
natural science on the other, without explicitly noticing it as such.
Or, I might be wrong. At the least, some philosophers may already have
recognized this queer twist or volvulus and come to rectify the
situation.
Koichiro Matsuno
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 1997 14:58:29 -0700 (PDT)
Message-Id: <v01540b14b06294c8310a@[128.223.150.112]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
From: liberman@darkwing.uoregon.edu (Kenneth Liberman)
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: Three Inquiries
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Length: 5159
Status: RO
1. WILDERNESS. Johnstone suggests that "non-verbal thinking opens the
door to the possibility of observing the phenomena on their own terms" and
suggests "deep aesthetic experience" and "meditation" as two kinds of
non-verbal experience. I want to offer a third - experiencing wild earth -
as an additional context in which to think the matter discussed among
Johnstone, Schieffelin, et al. about whether there can be an intricacy of
experience outside of culture or whether an "affectivity" could occur that
would not be language-driven (in either the broader or narrower senses of
language that have been debated). My question: can one experience the
earth in ITS silence, or is its silence always our silence? Schieffelin
writes correctly it seems (10/1), "The world involves not only our
'articulating it' but our 'resonating with it.'" And it seems to me that
after some weeks of roaming around a wilderness (already a loaded term,
I'll grant) there is a local temporality indigenous to a place that begins
to squeeze out our own culturally derived temporalities. Since we may be
willing to grant an embryo some pre-cultural or pre-linguistic experience,
why not our own silent encounter with "wild being" (from M-P), e.g. the
brute earth? All I can say is that this intricacy happens, and it strikes
me as being outside of culture and language (is experiencing an earthquake,
or a sunrise, primarily a cultural experience, a linguistic experience?)
While our temporality is still present, there is a reciprocal relation
(again, M-P) with what is not ours and which transforms us. Here (to
Csordas) the preobjective is precultural. Against my own proposal I will
admit that I was surprised with how the natural landscape of Australian
Aboriginal people (who I lived with for two years) is already for them so
thoroughly invested with their cultural imagination. And I am engaged in a
decade long dialectic with Earth First!ers that their view of "brute earth"
is largely informed by a cultural romanticism. But there are places when
"wild being" does break open.
2. PHILOSOPHY EAST-WEST. Tracy Strong is nervous about "the argument that
Tsong Khapa 'prefigures Wittgenstein'." The queasiness is warranted, but
it should not paralyze us from thinking through other traditions. Most
Aboriginal anthropologists saw ONLY his/her own preference - Marxist,
Freudian, Structural-Functional, etc. - much to the occultation of the
Aboriginal people, but there are still Aboriginal people and their lives
can be shared. It is similar with comparative philosophy (and they have
taken up your concern in detail for more than three decades now). Very
briefly put, a serious study of South Asian philosophical culture reveals
centuries of texts that are fundamentally realist in orientation, yet
within these traditions there was a lucid following up of the intuition
that the "real" is provided for only by the conceptual life of the mind; a
cornucopia of idealisms were formulated and contested with each other.
Within Mahayana Buddhism the shortcomings of these idealisms were critiqued
and a "Middle way," between realism and idealism, that paid close attention
to process was proposed. It attempts to employ a methodology that is
reflexive and does not reify itself and yet can witness "the way it is" in
its freshness and (will you let me say?) "intricacy," without reducing it
to static formulae. Yet it, too, developed static formulae (does that not
sound like us?) That European philosophy struggled with the shortcomings
of realism, proposed idealisms (Hume, Kant, perhaps Husserl) and then
struggled with even these (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Wittgenstein)
suggests that there is enough similarity (based upon independent
investigations of reality and the reflective life) to warrant some
comparison. I myself am a little more skeptical about the comparisons with
Wittgenstein (one of the best attempts is Robert Thurman's Introduction to
Tsong Khapa's Middle way "Essence of True Eloquence"), than I am about
comparisons with the Phenomenologists, but the independent agendas of East
and West may share more than is your first hunch. Of course, any
enthusiasm here will only contribute to the likelihood of self-delusion.
The real question is not whether we can or cannot understand Tsong Khapa;
it is to learn how to listen to him carefully. Making a fetish of
Tibetanismus will only create more benevolent cultural imperialism. But
when phobias about this fetish prevent us from listening to a serious
thinker, or assertng that such listening cannot be accomplished, then the
cultural imperialism is left in tact.
,
3. THE PRESENT PROGRESSIVE. To Rosen (10/8), who writes, following
Matsuno, "Science tacitly skips over the 'present progressive sense.'"
Does logic also, or is logic better able to retain the present progressive?
If so, how?
Ken Liberman
University of Oregon
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 1997 12:51:06 -0400
From: "Steve Rosen" <ROSEN-S@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: Reply to Gendlin and Liberman
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Steve Rosen replies to Gene Gendlin
Gene wrote:
> TO STEVE ROSEN
> Let's not surrender nature to mathematical mechanics -- leaving humans
> floating. Then human bodies are mathematical machines -- as if math were
> not something utterly and exclusively human!
> I know you aren't saying this, but it can sound like that.
> Let's not make culture and history overarch the individual embodied hum
an
> !
> We grow out of nature and culture, with and AFTER them. We have (are, live
> from .....) interpersonal situational philosophical bodies.
I am relieved to hear, Gene, that you know I am not suggesting that
we "surrender nature to mathematical mechanics," but I would love to
hear you say more about why you think I *sound* as if I *am* making
such a suggestion. I assume you are referring to my work with
topological structures such as the Klein bottle. You say that
mathematics is "something utterly and exclusively human." I had
hoped you would have seen that my work is completely consistent with
this, that -- far from looking to continue mathematics' forgetfulness
of its bodily human origin -- I am attempting to help reclaim
mathematics for the lived body. As I see it, the significance of the
self-reflexive Klein bottle is that it particularly lends itself to
such reclamation.
But perhaps, Gene, I am misunderstanding your somewhat cryptic
comment. I need to hear more.
Kenneth Liberman wrote:
> 3. THE PRESENT PROGRESSIVE. To Rosen (10/8), who writes, following
> Matsuno, "Science tacitly skips over the 'present progressive
sense.'"
> Does logic also, or is logic better able to retain the present
progressive?
> If so, how?
It is my understanding that logic, particularly as practiced in the
context of classico-modern(ist) Western philosophy, has tended to skip
over the "present progressive mood" (aka "process time") just as much
as science and mathematics have. Of course, as I said above in
agreement with Gendlin, math/science/logic are themselves ongoing
outgrowths of bodily human process, with its concretely lived
temporality. Although we have indeed distracted ourselves from the
processual roots of our activities, and although it may even have
been necessary that we do this, it seems that at this juncture, we
may be ready to (re)sensitize ourselves to those roots. I take it
that such a redirection of attention, such a shifting of posture, is
what Gendlin's Focusing is all about -- AND: Falk's "threshold
sense," Sundararajan's "preserved subjectivity," Sheets-Johnstone's
"moving together," Matsuno's "synchronization of local clocks,"
Solomon's penchant for "dance," Schieffelin's "loving participation,"
and Levin's "bodily recollection of Being," to name but a few
expressions of what it may mean to "come after postmodernism."
Steve Rosen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 19:17:42 -0400
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
From: Mary Hendricks-Gendlin <mgendlin@rivertown.net>
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: Process Model
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Length: 2364
Status: RO
To Koichiro Matsuno from Gene Gendlin
I love your wonderful point, that the process of someone comparing
different clocks cannot be (in) the usually assumed kind of flat, merely
observED time.
This breaks the usually assumed BASIC model of anything real as being
within flat time and space, merely a filler of such time and space.
Currently this model is widely put into question, but it determines most
thinking nevertheless, because we have no well-known alterative. Doubting
it does not give us a different way to think of anything.
Let us not be opposed to building new "basic" models. If we don't, then
there is always only the old one -- rather we need one or more alternatives.
Then we would become able to think beyond them. If we have more than one,
we cannot avoid thinking beyond them.
What if instead of flat perceivED, observED points-over-there we built a
basic model on the model-instance of someone comparing clocks?
The basic way to think of anything would be as a process that has (is,
generates, moves on in .....) ITS OWN time, rather than depending upon an
external observer to supply merely external relations between passive
space-time points.
As your example shows, there must be a process that generates its own
relations, because the usual space and time depend upon the continuity
provided by "the idealized observer," so there must somewhere be a process
that has (generates, is .....) ITS OWN continuity.
In such a process there wouldn't be first an abstract, separated time, that
events only fill. Rather, we could think of it as a process, an eventing, a
happening with its own continuity, not a set of atomic time-space points
that need external relations put on them.
Any event in such a process would not be discrete, but already always also
an IMPLYING of further events.
I have constructed such a model. Its now on our web page (under
philosophy) called "A Process Model."
I would much appreciate your looking at it, especially I-III and IVB. Any
kind of comment or critique would be very welcome.
Gene Gendlin
Mary Hendricks Ph.D.
Focusing Institute
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Message-Id: <199710160205.LAA09691@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: [APM: DISCUSS]: Process Model
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 2047
Status: RO
To Gene Gendlin on your Process Model; from Koichiro Matsuno
I agree with Gendlin's point:
> so there must somewhere be a process
>that has (generates, is .....) ITS OWN continuity.
> In such a process there wouldn't be first an abstract, separated time, that
>events only fill. Rather, we could think of it as a process, an eventing, a
>happening with its own continuity, not a set of atomic time-space points
>that need external relations put on them.
A possible model I have been tinkering with is to establish a bridge
between a Kantian perception-apprehension-apperception strictly in the
present perfect tense and a mess, conflict or inconsistency exclusively
in the present progressive tense. The Kantian time is of course legitimately
discretized in the finished or experienced record. On the other hand,
conflicts, inconsistencies or turmoils in the present progressive tense
cannot be fathomed nor visualized in other than a form of continuity.
Once we get a confidence of having a record of the experienced by whatever
means, it would be hard to fight against what Kant said. Although I don't
have any explicit model on this at this moment, I am a bit optimistic in
that we have already had a descriptive means for establishing such a
model, because the mode of the present progressive tense enables us to
pay attention directly to continuity, like handling a hot potato, without
having an intervention of discontinuity or an abstraction of whatever sort.
I plan to give a talk on the related thing in a semiotics meeting
in Toronto tomorrow (I am still in Japan). I intend to use the context
of the emergence of life for this purpose. After having some responses
there and reading your "A Process Model" on the webpage, I may be able
to say more.
Koichiro Matsuno
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
From: "Steve Rosen" <ROSEN-S@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
Organization: The College of Staten Island
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 1997 11:18:40 -0400
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: Process time and APM modeling
Priority: normal
X-Mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.1 (R1a)
Message-Id: <AC38B751555@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 2448
Status: RO
Response to Gene Gendlin and Koichiro Matsuno, from Steve Rosen
I very much like what Gene has been saying about a process model of
time (he has been saying it for quite awhile now, and saying it
well). In an APM posture, time cannot be grasped in terms of
external relationships among points which constitute a continuum
given to a detached, idealized observer. Koichiro's work, as I read
it, also speaks to this point. I would like to suggest carrying the
idea forward on an epistemological front in a way that I believe
should be amenable to both Gene and Koichiro. In fact, maybe what I
am going to say is *obvious* to them. If so, I think it might at
least be helpful to emphasize the idea by making it more explicit.
Gene has spoken of new meanings of words emerging in the new contexts
that are generated by our transactions. I suggest that, in an APM
process model of time, the word "model" itself would have a new
meaning. Here the "model" -- being articulated from bodily intricacy
in such a way that we'd remain cognizant of the body's ongoing
operation -- would entail an aspect of *concrete self-reference*.
Said differently, the process time that we'd be speaking about in our
model would not itself be just a theoretical object embedded in an
abstract conceptual space or continuum that exists at the disposal of
a detached modeler; rather, this process time would be OUR time. To
be sure, there are *modernist* models of process and self-referential
temporality, but it seems that in such cases, the lived temporality
of the modeler's own body drops out. In the APM-type model, we -- we
conference participants looking to model time -- would do so with our
very own bodies. So the distinguishing feature of APM modeling is
that, in it, we put our bodies where our models are.
Again, in making this comment, I see myself as only spelling out an
important feature that is already an integral part of Gene's work, as
well as Koichiro's work and my own, namely, bodily self-reference.
But I do believe it is helpful to make this as explicit as possible,
since it is all too easy for the default assumption about what
modeling entails to operate.
Steve Rosen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Sender: Theodore J Kisiel <tg0tjk1@corn.cso.niu.edu>
Reply-To: Theodore J Kisiel <tg0tjk1@corn.cso.niu.edu>
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: Re. interventions of Matsuno, Heelan, Rosen, Crownfield,et al.
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Cc: tkisiel@niu.edu
Message-Id: <Pine.3.89.9710191630.A11954-0100000@corn.cso.niu.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII
Content-Length: 6901
Status: RO
FROM TED KISIEL
A belated entry into the fray at two recurring points, after finally reading
through most of the missives/missals/missles since mid-June:
I was particularly struck by Koichiro Matsuno's grammatological
"tensoral" approach (10/6) to the current spatio-temporal schematism of
physics, its shift from the present perfect to the present progressive tense
in examining the interchanges at the ineluctable middle-voiced core of
experience articulating itself into experiencING and experiencED. Such a
verbal grammatology is clearly the direction that Heidegger's analyses
were taking in the never published pivotal Third Division of SZ (= Sein
und Zeit), in projecting the ecstatic temporality of our being-here-now
onto the horizon of a "tensorality" (Temporalitaet, from Tempus, Tempora
= gramm. tenses) of being, which articulatesinto horizonal schemata not
only according to Praesens, Futurum, and Praeteritum but more
significantly in their complexification with the actional "aspects"
(Aktionsarten: SZ 349) of the verb form distinguished onto
simple/punctilear/instantaneous, continuous/linear/progressive, and
completive/perfective/consequential ("karmic") actions. Already at SZ 85,
Heidegger refers to the temporal "carry over" of the habit systems of our
technical habitat of fabrication and usage as a "present perfect
apriori," followed by a repeated stress of the present perfect suffixes
in existentials like WeltLICHKEIT and BefindLICHKEIT. Even earlier in his
development, Heidegger puzzled over the actively middle-voiced dynamics of
"historicity" that emerges spontaneously from the self-referential
"experience experienced," as an ongoing "experiencing OF the experienced"
that constitutes our understanding OF be-ing (double genitive "of"). All
of this grammatological complexification gets potentialized in the
equiprimordial family of exclamatory impersonals that in the end name
be-ing pure and simple, which always should be translated into the English
present progressive: "It's giving!, It's worlding! (contextualizing),
It's sending!, It's happening!/It's properizing! (Es er-eignet sich),"
etc. The IT of be-ing is here clearly not substantive but indicative of
the sheer action of be-ing as IT is absorbed into ITS multiplex dynamic
nuances by way of this litany of "impersonal" verbs. After all, that's
the way IT IS!
A not unrelated point of entry is Patrick Heelan's appeal (6/29,
7/10) to my characterizing Heidegger's distinction between the
traditional What categories and Da-sein's Who/How "Existenzialien" as the
distinction between the abstract/generic universal of the All and the
Anyone and the concrete/distributive universal of the Each ("in each case
mine"). The formally indicative hermeneutics that governs the early
Heidegger's "transcendental logic" of concept formation fuses the
formality of intentionality, at its simplest understood dynamically (thus
ultimately the formality of time) in terms of the middle-voiced "sich
richten nach" (directing itself toward/being directed toward) and in its
more situated formulations understood as being-in, be-ing with,
having-to-be, ex-sistence, etc.--this "formality" coupled with the
indexical "indication" of Da-sein as "each time mine, my while." The
temporal ontology of being-here-now-I-this time is thereby an ontology of
the basic indexicals, what Husserl called "occasional expressions," such
that its existentials require repeated realignment ("authentication")
from the individualized situation, according to the variant occasion, the
"je nach dem" of the context and circumstances of originative
temporality, like the repeated "synchroniztion of local clocks" of which
Steve Rosen and Pat Heelan speak in their replies (e.g. 10/8) to Matsuno.
Heidegger is not the only one who has identified a
non-abstractive non-subsumptive, indexically temporal universal--after
all, Aristotle already noted that "being is not a genus"--on the level of
spatio-temporal schematization a la Kant, all in a belated response to
the postmod "critique of universalizing, anonymizing, normative, tacitly
hierarchical discourse (so David Crownfield, 9/23). Two thinkers worthy
of mention both derive their inspiration from Kant's distinction between
the "determining" subsuming judgment and the "reflecting" concretizing
judgment, the phronetic judgment responsive to the concrete situation of
action and enjoyment. Paul Ricoeur notes the "poietic universal" that
emerges from the unique spatio-temporal plot-configurations of great
narratives like Greek tragedy, whose phronetic polysemy belies the
univocal reduction of covering-law models that would transform
idiographic history into a nomothetic science. That postmodernist, Hannah
Arendt, appalled by Eichmann's thoughtless appeal to Kant's second
Critique to defend his rote obedience to his felt obligation of moral
duty, turns to the third Critique for a more discriminating political
judgment of "moral taste," a judgement that is responsive to those
ethical/political dilemmas that belie covering laws, so that the
universal must be espied in the particular, arise from the particular,
and remain in the particular. "I put forward my judgment of [moral] taste
as an example of the judgment of common sense and accordingly attribute
to it EXEMPLARY validity" (K.d.U., # 22), thereby discerning in the
particualr what is valid for more than one case in the communal sense.
One is reminded of T.S. Kuhn's PARADIGMS taken in the strict sense, not
the high-level background theory of a scientific community but those
EXEMPLAR problem-solutions like the freely falling body, frictionless
plane, vernier measurement, etc. that mediate at the concrete cutting
edge and heart of techno-scientific development. With this return to
"paradigms" (like "amo, amas, amat, etc.") in science, we have come full
circle also to the grammatology of physics, as well as to postmod
"non-concepts" like differance and its endless variants (supplement,
trace, mark, hymen, etc. etc. ad nauseam), which are likewise
middle-voiced in the undecidability of their shifting spatio-temporal
schematisms. From the various proposals, it would seem that "the"
paradigm for our APM Conference is just as shifting and fluid.
============================================================================
Theodore Kisiel email: tkisiel@niu.edu
Department of Philosophy phone: 815/753-6412
Northern Illinois University fax: 815/753-6302
DeKalb, IL 60115
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 11:55:57 +0900
From: koichiro matsuno/7129 <kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
Message-Id: <199710230255.LAA25231@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: Process time and APM modeling
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 3668
Status: RO
To Gene Gendlin, Ingrid Harris, Ted Kisiel and Steve Rosen
on Process Model: from Koichiro Matsuno
First of all, Kisiel has cleared my curiosity over Heidegger's
mysterious Third Division of "Sein und Zeit". I couldn't make a
head and tail out of the rumors on the likely content to which I
was exposed previously.
A process model of time reminds me of time to a worm crawling
on the earth, instead of that to a bird flying over in the sky. The
spatio-temporal horizon in a worm's eye perspective remains finite,
whereas the horizon can be infinite in a bird's eye perspective. Our
experience with postmodernism and expectation on something coming
after that almost surely convince us that everybody has no more than
a worm's eye perspective. Each worm sets its own horizon in the first
place more than anything else, and something coming over the horizon
is always a surprise to it. That something certainly has the agential
capacity of surprising whatever worms subsisting in an empirical arena.
Above all, forming the finite spatio-temporal horizon for each worm
can be accomplished only through its bodily (a la Rosen and Gendlin)
negotiation with others. Such a negotiation can be described in the
mode of the present progressive tense, since we can see two or more
than two agents are invovled in the action expressed in the present
progressive tense. For instance, we may sometimes say "A wall is hitting
me while walking in my room during blackout". This wall in the present
progressive tense functions as an active agent. But, this is by no means
a resurrection of the defunct vitalism in any sense of the word. If we
switch our stance to the present perfect tense dealing only with things
frozen and crystalized in the record, the active agent turns out to be
only the person moving around in the room. The wall is found to be there
as an object simply to be acted upon.
This is the place where some intricacy of causality enters. My
understanding of Harris' point on existential implication of causality
is aided by recalling a case of handling a hot potato. You can describe
how you have moved your hands by referring to the record in the present
perfect tense, but the hot potato is not in the record. The potato is
only in the action in progress, and is quite existential as a carrier of
the past into the present.
Modernist science, especially physics is incompetent in describing
such a hot potato, since it does not concern itself with an existential
carrier of complications that could be described only in the present
progressive tense. However, if we are really interested in dynamics,
a brute fact for this matter can be found nowhere else other than in
events in the present progressive tense. Of course, there has been a
tradition to limit the realm of sciences to be practiced only to those
experienced, frozen in the present perfect tense. This observation gives
us only two alternatives, either to eliminate things and events in the
present progressive tense as charging themselves as not being an authentic
member of scientific enterprises or to relax such an artificial stipulation
for the sake of real dynamics. And, the choice would seem rather obvious
because even if the present progressive is allowed, the ascetic attitude
observing only the present perfect would lose nothing insofar as it sticks
to things that have been done.
Koichiro Matsuno
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
From: "Steve Rosen" <ROSEN-S@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
Organization: The College of Staten Island
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 1997 20:24:17 -0400
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: Process metaphysics
Priority: normal
X-Mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.1 (R1a)
Message-Id: <B14A589654A@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 3016
Status: RO
A question for Mark Bickhard from Steve Rosen
I have been reading Mark Bickhard's material on the concept of
*evolutionary emergence.* My understanding is that Mark wants to
counter reductionism but save naturalism via a process approach to
metaphysics (he introduced this idea to us in a couple of earlier
posts). What sparks my curiosity is the question of how Mark's
notion of process compares with the sort of "process time" I spoke of
in my last post, which reads as follows:
> Response to Gene Gendlin and Koichiro Matsuno, from Steve Rosen
>
> I very much like what Gene has been saying about a process model of
> time (he has been saying it for quite awhile now, and saying it
> well). In an APM posture, time cannot be grasped in terms of
> external relationships among points which constitute a continuum
> given to a detached, idealized observer. Koichiro's work, as I read
> it, also speaks to this point. I would like to suggest carrying the
> idea forward on an epistemological front in a way that I believe
> should be amenable to both Gene and Koichiro. In fact, maybe what I
> am going to say is *obvious* to them. If so, I think it might at
> least be helpful to emphasize the idea by making it more explicit.
>
> Gene has spoken of new meanings of words emerging in the new contexts
> that are generated by our transactions. I suggest that, in an APM
> process model of time, the word "model" itself would have a new
> meaning. Here the "model" -- being articulated from bodily intricacy
> in such a way that we'd remain cognizant of the body's ongoing
> operation -- would entail an aspect of *concrete self-reference*.
> Said differently, the process time that we'd be speaking about in our
> model would not itself be just a theoretical object embedded in an
> abstract conceptual space or continuum that exists at the disposal of
> a detached modeler; rather, this process time would be OUR time. To
> be sure, there are *modernist* models of process and self-referential
> temporality, but it seems that in such cases, the lived temporality
> of the modeler's own body drops out. In the APM-type model, we -- we
> conference participants looking to model time -- would do so with our
> very own bodies. So the distinguishing feature of APM modeling is
> that, in it, we put our bodies where our models are.
>
> Again, in making this comment, I see myself as only spelling out an
> important feature that is already an integral part of Gene's work, as
> well as Koichiro's work and my own, namely, bodily self-reference.
> But I do believe it is helpful to make this as explicit as possible,
> since it is all too easy for the default assumption about what
> modeling entails to operate.
>
> Steve Rosen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
From: "Steve Rosen" <ROSEN-S@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
Organization: The College of Staten Island
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 17:48:50 -0400
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: On Process Philosophy and Emergence
Priority: normal
X-Mailer: Pegasus Mail v3.1 (R1a)
Message-Id: <B8A119D2E72@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 5239
Status: RO
Steve Rosen's response to Mark Bickhard's paper on "Emergence":
[I sent the following post to Mark in an off-line correspondence
and thought some of you might be interested in it, though you may
not have read Mark's paper.]
I have now completed my reading of your "Emergence" paper and found
myself very sympathetic to what you are trying to do. In fact, it
seems to me our two approaches are rather closely related to one
another in some important respects.
In particular, it seems our views converge in the questions they
raise about the standard distinction in mathematical physics between
the local character of space, on the one hand, and the global-
topological properties of entities (objects, processes) that are
embedded in space, on the other. You have argued that, at bottom,
there IS NO static spatiotemporal framework composed of passively
juxtaposed local point-elements. You seem to be saying, in effect,
that nature is topological through and through, so that we must not
think of topological structure as being limited to objects or
processes *embedded* in space, with space itself being taken as a
frozen template. For my part, I would argue, not so much that there
are no local elements at all, but that the local elements are
themselves processual, that spacetime itself evolves like an
organism. As I see it, a dialectical approach is essential to an
effective process theory of nature. To me this means that neither
the changeless space-time context of classicism and modernism nor the
free-floating, purely transitory processes of postmodernism will
suffice, but that we require a *dialectic* of changelessness and
change. This is what I think "coming after postmodernism" is about.
I suggest that a naturalistic theory of emergence hinges on realizing
such a dialectic. Would you agree?
But just how do we do it? How do we gain "naturalistic closure" while
at the same time achieving *openings* to entirely new levels of
order? I propose we do this by the radically nonlinear act of
concrete self-reference, as I believe you have intimated in your
discussion of the role of *recursion* in evolution (see also my book
chapter on "Creative Evolution"). Saying it in more existential
terms, emergence takes place when we supersede the subject-object,
self-other split by putting OURSELVES into the process. As long as we
continue to attempt to describe process in a manner that merely
objectifies it (as is done in modern{ist} science), it will not be
processual enough to allow for emergence.
In my writings, I have sought to facilitate process by using several
special topological structures, most important of which is the Klein
bottle. To deliver the self-referentiality of this paradoxical
structure, I have had to interpret it in a highly non-standard way:
rather than regarding it merely as topological in the conventional
sense of being a nonlinear mathematical object embedded in linear
space, I have construed it as a structure that *supersedes the
division* between the contents of space and their spatial container.
In my interpretation, the Klein bottle is a *self-containing*
structure that expresses the nonlinearity of space itself. Moreover,
the nonlinearity in question encompasses the SUBJECTIVITY OF THE
OBSERVER. See my conference background paper for the full development
of this idea.
If a self-referential process that surpasses the subject-object split
indeed is necessary for emergence, it seems that this would be
reflected in all emergent domains or quantum fields (as you call
them). None would be merely "objective" or "physical"; all would be
"sub-objective" or "psycho-physical." A promising way to bring this
out is through the rather enigmatic *quantum of action" that has been
described in quantum mechanics. I believe this indivisible -- i.e.
*unobjectifiable* -- unit of process can be interpreted as a basic
unit of interpenetrative subject-object interaction, thus, of
self-referentiality. In fact, I would suggest that the "topological"
counterpart of the quantum of action is the Klein bottle. An
interesting possibility is that *several* quanta of action may be
defined by adjusting the angular term (2 pi) in the formula. These
quanta of action would correspond to quantum fields. We might go so
far as to consider evolutionary emergence as occurring via the
evolution of the quanta of action.
In all of this, reductionism would be avoided by making it clear that
we are not just speaking of evolution in objectified terms but
including our own subjectivity in the process. It is when lived
subjectivity is excluded that the different orders of quantum fields
would be simply incommensurable. I suggest that there would be no way
to make them commensurable in purely objective terms. Only by
including the *subjective* aspect, the aspect of concrete self-
reference, would we provide the continuity between and among the
quantum fields.
Steve Rosen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 1997 21:08:52 -0400
From: "Steve Rosen" <ROSEN-S@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: process, emergence, rationality
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Steve Rosen's response to Mark Bichhard's post of 10/26:
Mark wrote:
> It seems to me that we are not currently in a position to be
> able to present a process metaphysics that satisfies the
> relevant constraints - there is just too much physics to be
> done yet.
To what extent does the development of an effective process
metaphysics depend on the doing of physics? To me it would depend
rather on doing physics DIFFERENTLY from the way it has been done
within the framework of classicism and modernism, doing it
proprioceptively, from "bodily intricacy," i.e., doing physics in the
concretely self-referential way I indicated in my last post. What I
am suggesting, Mark, is that, short of questioning the objectifying
orientation of modern(ist) science in a fundamental way, we will not
be able to develop an effective process metaphysics. Again, if we do
not include OURSELVES in the process in an existentially embodied
fashion, WE WILL NOT HAVE THOROUGHGOING PROCESS but will just be
continuing to operate within the essentially non-processual
subject-vs.-object mode.
> One serious challenge to such "local process" approaches,
> however, (as well as to virtually every other approach) is the
> necessity for being able to account for the non-localities of
> quantum mechanics and field theory. The topology of
> processual element interactions must somehow generate, in
> some emergent sense, the manifestations of the space-time
> tensor dynamics.
Once again I find myself coming back to the need for a DIALECTICAL
approach, this time to the mathematical distinction between local vs.
global-topological properties. It is when we no longer presuppose a
categorical dichotomy between the local and the global, the particle
and the field, that we'll be able to see how "field" features can be
generated from "processual element interactions." The adoption of a
dialectical approach would not simply be a theoretical move nor
perhaps even a metaphysical one (your last response has reactivated
earlier misgivings I expressed about the totalizing, objectifying
tendencies of metaphysics as such). In assuming a dialectical
posture (in the sense so well described by Merleau-Ponty; see his
"Interrogation and Dialectic" in THE VISIBLE AND THE INVISIBLE), we
would be shifting our whole existential-ontological center of
gravity, so to speak.
> A concern that I have about some of the discussions on APM has to
> do with the rejection of the notion of objectivity.
> Clearly "objectivity" has been the source of serious problems
> and distortions, but the trend towards increased levels and
> kinds of invariance both in child development and in physics
> is absolutely clear and of unquestionable importance.
> Absolute objectivity is impossible, but the search for deeper
> forms of invariance cannot be abandoned or reversed. To
> reject invariances is to normatively retreat to the world of the
> youngest infant - no objects, no permanence, no semantic or
> episodic memory, and so on (some developmentalists would
> have the infant be capable of more than this, but my point
> would still hold, and those developmentalists commit multiple
> logical and methodological errors anyway). Such a retreat is
> not only undesirable, it is also impossible, so any position
> committed to it is internally contradictory.
>
> This point becomes relevant, it seems to me, in attempts to
> construct a process metaphysics directly out of existential
> phenomenological investigations. Such a form of
> investigation must be taken into account, and the very
> possibility of such investigation must ultimately be accounted
> for, but the best metaphysics of existential phenomenology
> and the best metaphysics of the world in general are not likely
> to have a relationship to each other of identity.
Let me state what I think you're essentially saying here in simple
and blunt terms, with the idea that you'll let me know if I missed
your point or you think I am wrong. What I'm getting from you is
that there is a "metaphysics of the world in general" that has
potential access to certain objective truths ("invariants") and for
this reason is in a priviledged position compared with existential
phenomenology, that latter being limited to the relativities of the
subjective realm. If this IS what you are saying, with all due
respect it sounds very much to me like the old Platonic tradition
that came BEFORE postmodernism. Also, I would not accept this as an
accurate characterization of existential phenomenology. Perhaps
POSTMODERNISM places its strongest emphasis on the relativities of
the subjective, but the best of existential phenomenology seeks to
surpass our deeply engrained habit of SPLITTING subject and object.
So existential phenomenology is not a subjectivist methodology that
can be subsumed within an overarching objectivist metaphysics;
rather, phenomenology seeks dialectically to COME AFTER both the
abstractly universalizing metaphysics of classicism and modernism,
and the mere collapse of universality found in postmodernism.
Steve Rosen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 1997 21:56:39 -0400
From: "Steve Rosen" <ROSEN-S@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: present progressive tense
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
>From Steve Rosen
I've been thinking about Koichiro Matsuno's idea that modern(ist)
science limits itself to the present perfect tense, "passing
over in silence" (Husserl) the present progressive mode. Koichiro is
suggesting that a science that would come after modernism and
postmodernism alike would function in/be receptive to the present
progressive. Theodore Kisiel reinforced this point by bringing in
Heidegger. But I need to be clearer about what it would mean to do
science in present progressive time. Koichiro intimates that science
would be dialogical instead of monological, that scientists would be
open to their subject-matter and to each other in a fluid, co-
creative, concretely participatory way. A compatible portrayal of
science after postmodernism is that it would be "proprioceptive,"
that it would INCLUDE the "preseparated bodily intricacy" it moves
out of, rather than consigning it to shadow. Still, I would like
to be able to grasp this more clearly, to get a better, more vivid
sense of what such a science would be like. I am also well aware that
we do not necessarily all agree on the possibility or even the
desirability of such a transformation of science. Would not such a
goal constitute but another "beyond enterprise," as Marcelo Dascal
might say? Might not the very goal-directedness of such a program
take us out of the present progressive mood, out of process time?
There's a dialectic implicit in this that has a familiar ring ...
In any case, I would love to hear from others -- and especially
participants in the section on science/logic -- about what is in fact
our central issue: Just how do we come after postmodernism in the
realm of science.
Steve Rosen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 10:38:59 +0900
From: kmatsuno@voscc.nagaokaut.ac.jp
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: process, emergence, rationality
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
To Mark Bickhard (10/29) and Steve Rosen (10/28) on
process, emergence and rationality: from Koichiro Matsuno
The issues raised by both Mark and Steve seem really
crucial for us.
Mark's point:
> Absolute objectivity is impossible, but the search for deeper
> forms of invariance cannot be abandoned or reversed. To
> reject invariances is to normatively retreat to the world of the
> youngest infant - no objects, no permanence, no semantic or
> episodic memory, and so on
should be well taken. At the same time, Steve's counter-argument
to Mark:
> What I'm getting from you is
> that there is a "metaphysics of the world in general" that has
> potential access to certain objective truths ("invariants") and for
> this reason is in a priviledged position compared with existential
> phenomenology, that latter being limited to the relativities of the
> subjective realm. If this IS what you are saying, with all due
> respect it sounds very much to me like the old Platonic tradition
> that came BEFORE postmodernism.
also sounds irresistable. Let me do something which may do a favor
to both parties, though I am not a competent diplomat.
Take, for instance, the the first law of thermodynamics stating
the invariance of energy taken altogether, while admitting the
distinction of qualities of energy, such as heat and work. If we
have a record of energy transactions like a balance sheet which
each corporate publishes from time to time, the invariance of
energy must be observed there, otherwise some frauds must have
been involved. But, the balance sheet and the day-to-day business
are different. The invarance of energy in the record is a
consequence of the transactional activities of the agents that
can distinguish different qualities of energy. The record is
in the present perfect tense, while transactions are in the
present progressive tense. What is remarkable to the first
law of thermodynamics is that it does internally admit an
agential capacity of making distinction between qualities of
energy on the spot, while observing the global invariance of
energy in the effect. I have taken Mark's position in the
present perfect tense, while Steve's in the present progressive
tense.
One more remark made by Mark:
>One serious challenge to such "local process" approaches,
>however, (as well as to virtually every other approach) is the
>necessity for being able to account for the non-localities of
>quantum mechanics and field theory.
would not seem to bring us a big headache, at least to me. Those
non-localities quantum physicists (e.g., Aspect et al) have actually
contrived are the non-localities of the experimental apparata they
constructed. Quantum mechanics is very unique in taking a non-local
or spatially-spreading wavefunction to be most fundamental. In order
to actualize such a nonlocal quantum state, we have to fabricate a
nonlocal container to put it in a good condition. Unless we prepare
such a container, we cannot observe the claimed quantum state even
if it is legitimate in its own light. Conversely, even if we are not
sure about a stable, nonlocal container, quantum mechanics would not
blame us. Our incompetence in making such a container on order would
also not denigrate the established theoretical integrity of quantum
mechanics.
Koichiro Matsuno
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Sat, 01 Nov 1997 12:00:59 EST
From: mhb0@Lehigh.EDU (Mark H. Bickhard)
X-Mailer: SENDM [Version 2.0.17]
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: response to Crownfield, Matsuno, Rosen
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 4442
Status: RO
David Crownfield raises an important distinction. The
assumption of some sort of *absolute* objectivity is, in
addition to being simply false, also frequently license for
attempts at dominance (sometimes, of course, such attempts
succeed). The problem that emerges is a miniature version of
the basic theme of the conference: how to reject such notions of
objectivity without also falling into a pure idealism with
accompanying relativism - without losing an "objective"
world. My comment about objectivity was not in fact in
response to Crownfield's earlier discussion, but instead to the
relative *absence* of any discussion in this forum of how to
maintain presuppositions of a real world without simply falling
back into the falsities and dangers of "absolute" objectivity.
The pejorative connotations of "objectivity" seem to be
blocking an entire domain of discussion.
We do not advisedly begin with either subjectivity or
objectivity, but recognize that each is differentiated from the
other in a progressive and constructive and dialectical
manner. Wittgenstein pointed this out; it is a central theme in
Gendlin's "A Process Model". We cannot, however, capture in
any full sense an experiential pre-subjective and pre-objective
process. We could not even ask any such questions in such a
state. So understanding the process of differentiation is a
matter of philosophical and theoretical exploration, not only
of description.
Arguably the most important aspect of the differentiation of
an objective world is that of invariance - invariance of process
aspects to other process aspects. Invariance of certain kinds
with respect to our own viewpoints and actions yields notions
of objects, for example. Frame invariances of other kinds
yield relativity theories and conserved quantities via Emmy
Noether's theorem. (It is not clear to me how Rosen reads a
"privileging" into this point.)
One critical constraint on such a differentiation is that the
developing subjective pole and the developing objective pole
must remain coherent with respect to each other. This
constraint is often massively violated. Much of contemporary
physics, for example, makes the emergence of mentality
impossible, or at least inexplicable. Conversely, an existential
focus that cannot accommodate the invariances of the world
is idealistically adrift.
Others have argued, and I do so also, that one of the
fundamental requirements for being able to account for the
world and mind and their relationships is that substance-
property metaphysical frameworks must be abandoned in
favor of a process metaphysics. There are many reasons why
this is advisable. One is simply that emergence of any kind
seems to be impossible within a classical particle framework -
all genuine causal power is at the level of the assumed
fundamental particles and everything else is simply
epiphenomenal (J. Kim).
Personally, I do not see any way to understand such a process
metaphysics that does not involve processual "elements"
(Rosen) (organization might be a better conception) in a
present progressive sense (Matsuno). (Einstein's block
universe is about as anti-processual as can be imagined.)
Elsewhere I have suggested, at least in part, how constraints
such as of conservation of momentum and charge and how
the so-called Heisenberg indeterminancy principles could
emerge from such a framework. I have also argued that
genuine emergence is possible within such a metaphysics and
have outlined the emergence of knowing, representation,
learning, emotions, reflexive consciousness, language, and
many other aspects of mentality. I would re-iterate, however,
that I think the most important emergence for the purposes of
this conference is that of rationality. It is the assumed
absolute objectivity of rationality that is at the heart of the
problematics of modernism, and it is a naive rejection of such
modernistic notions without any replacement for them that is
at the heart of the problematics of post-modernism.
Mark H. Bickhard
Cognitive Science, Psychology, Philosophy
17 Memorial Drive East
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA 18015
610-758-3633
mhb0@lehigh.edu
http://www.lehigh.edu/~mhb0/mhb0.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Sat, 01 Nov 1997 09:41:21 -0500
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
From: Mary Hendricks-Gendlin <mgendlin@rivertown.net>
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: new model
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Length: 27562
Status: RO
From Gene Gendlin
It's exciting that sevear of us have alternatives to the old basic model of
the finished-thing over there.
Along with Matsuno my model puts ONGOING first, not the finished happened
thing, Matsuno's worm needs no "perspective" within which to move. As he
says, ongoing may include many "agents" -- because it is not the over-there
from a perspectival center. Ongoing is not something perceived, nor does it
need to be perceiving. Perception is derivative.
I go along with those who have been saying that space is not to be thought
of as separate from what's "in" it. Let me add: Neither is time to be taken
as if it were "there" FIRST, or as something that can be empty or filled.
TIME CAN BE THOUGHT OF AS GENERATED IN AND BY EVENTING. Eventing as "ing"
is as Matsuno says, not complete discrete therenesses.
Instead of a future that becomes present and past (so that all tenses are
the same except for position) we can think of the future as an aspect of
eventing. It never becomes past. The past is not someone's remembered
pictures, not Kant's brought-along old present. The past is re-worked in
eventing, and exists only in it (unless someone remembers, but that's not
necessary). The past (without observer) is an aspect of eventing, but
obviously a very different aspect than the implying.
Taken as aspects of eventing, past and future are nothing like positions on
a line.
Yes, if eventing is first, then every bit of it HAPPENS INTO ITS OWN
IMPLYING, and carries its own implying forward. In Rosen's terms it
klinebottles along as it goes. Eventing-into-its-own-implying can replace
the basic model of the thing-in-space-over-there.
I want my model to be usable BOTH as if it were a usual conceptual model,
AND as our own process as Steve says. Every concept in it allows us ALSO to
move to (and think from) its experiential aspect. "Implying" is then the
felt-experienced tending of "....." at any juncture. (In the model this
doesn't come till section VIII, after body process, behavior, and culture,
but really it's the other way round: the basic terms of the model are of
course derived from experiencing, and can lead right back to it.)
Another main theme of my model (it comes in the first section) is to put
INTERACTION FIRST, so that the event IS an "inter," and only from it do
separates derive. (In Section III something separate is derived -- we
don't lose this but it is derivative from process eventing.)
This is a theme that many of our discussants have asserted (dialogue,
participation, the self that contains a we). Lets develop it with basic
terms that can let us think of anything as first an inter.
I will post the first two sections of "A Process Model" (it's on our Web
page.) Section IVB has more on time. I hope for critique, augmenting,
relations, and perhaps your actual use of it.
Gene Gendlin
from "A Process Model" (on our web page)
INTRODUCTORY NOTE:
I shall lay down some terms as if they came out of nowhere. I want to show
that this model can look like any other and that it has at least the same
powers. After a few pages I will turn to discuss some of its sources and
motivations, and more of them in chapter IVAd.
CHAPTER I. BODY-ENVIRONMENT (B-EN)
Body and environment are one, but of course only in certain respects. Let
us carefully define them. The body is a non-representational concretion of
(with) its environment. But body and environment also differ in some of
their characteristics and doings. Let me define four kinds of environment (en).
En#1 is the spectator's environment, what spectators define in their en
which may affect an organism. For example, it is en#1 when scientists or
hunters define the environment of an animal. They define the en factors.
They do it in their own terms. Some monkeys live in trees, others on the
ground. The spectator defines these en factors as there, separately from the
animal. The spectator may also note something (pollution for example) that
is about to affect the animal while the animal does not yet notice. The
spectator's bodies interact with "the animal's environment", their own
environment attributed to another living body.
En#2 is the reflexively identical environment; it is identical with the
organism's living process. Body and en are one event, one process. For
example, it is air-coming-into-lungs-and-blood cells. We can view this
event as air (coming in), or as (a coming into) lungs and body cells.
Either way it is one event, viewed as en or as body. Here we are not
calling it "environment" because it is all around, but because it
participates within the life process. And, "body" is not just the lungs,
but the lungs expanding. Air coming in and lungs expanding cannot be
separate. The point is that we need not split between the lungs and air.
Take another example, walking. The same pressure which is the foot's on
the ground, is also the ground's pressure on the foot. We can separate
ground from foot, but not ground's resistance from foot's pressure. The
en#2 is not the separable environment but the environment participating in a
living process. The en#2 is not the ground, but the
ground-participating-in-walking, its resistance. The behavior cannot be
separate from this ground-participating. If the body is hanging in air and
attempts to walk, its swing will be much wider and it will not move forward;
it won't be walking. In deep water "walking" will immediately be thrashing;
the motions will be different. The body cannot enact the same behavior
without the ground. And, the ground cannot be ground-pressure (it cannot be
this en#2) without the behavior. Without walking there is still a ground in
the sense of en#1, but not as en#2. The en#2 is a function of ongoing
living, and exists only in that living.
The familiar statement "the environment is a function of the organism"
receives here a more exact understanding. We can clarify what the
ethologists mean by saying that there is no single reality, only the reality
of each species. It is in the sense of en#2 that each species has a
different environment. Of course its species members are different but so is
the rest of the en. Environment#2 and the body are functions of each other.
In just this sense there is "no reality" except the various ones that are
implicated in the various living processes.
---
Thus body is both equal and not equal en! Rather than staying with such
paradoxes we are building distinctions and concepts. We have been able to
specify some exact respects in which it is and is not equal.
x
Body and en#2 imply each other -- it is basic to this philosophy that
"imply" is being defined, but we cannot yet define it from here alone. But
we can notice that what are usually called "body" and "en" look different,
even when we say that they are part of one event (foot and ground, air and
lungs). They are not look-alikes. The mutual implying between body and
environment is "non-ikonic," that is to say nonrepresentational. The
muscles and bones in the foot and leg do not look like the ground, but they
are very much related. One can infer hardness of the ground from the foot,
the leg, and their muscles. In an as yet unclear way "one can infer" means
that the foot implies the ground's hardness. Other kinds of terrain or
habitat imply different body parts. Since the body and the en are one event
in en#2, each implies the other. They imply each other in that they are
part of one interaction process, one organization. Or, we could say, each
is a part of a larger organization which includes the other. Each functions
as it does only in this wider functioning organization.
This use of "imply" also says that the whole event is already there even if
the body aspect or the en#2 aspect are thought of alone.
En#2 is always in some process, and identical with the body-in-some process.
En#3 is the environment that has been arranged by the body-en#2 process.
The body accumulates (is) a resulting environment. The mollusk's shell, the
spider's web, or the beaver's tree when it falls, these are their main
environment, but they are results of the animal's body-en#2 process. En#3
is wider than en#2.
We can set up a continuum of greater and lesser seeming separability. The
beaver's tree seems quite separable from the beaver, a bird's nest also; a
spider's web is separable from the spider who will live on and make another
if we destroy this web. The mollusk's shell isn't as separable yet we think
it separate. How about our hair -- is it not a product of the body? But our
skin too. And the body too!
The body of any creature is the result of its life process. En#3 includes
the beaver's felled tree, but also the beaver's body. The environment which
the process produces is wider, but it includes the body.
En#3 is another, a different way in which body and environment are one (the
body is environment), but since this environment is wider than the body,
this equation isn't perfect. How body and en#3 imply is more complicated.
(See IVAh-3)
The bloodstream is often called the environment of the cells it feeds. The
many processes in the body have various parts of it for their environment.
The skin-line is not the great divide. En#3 stretches from the beaver's tree
into its body to the cells. En#3 is the environment that has already been
regenerated by body process. It is the web and also the spider's body and
its parts and subparts.
The life process goes on in en#3; it goes on in the spider's web as well as
in its body.
The body is an environment in which body-process goes on further.
The body was made from an embryo engaged in process. The body structure is
not only made but also maintained by ongoing processes -- if they stop, the
body disintegrates.
See the lines on a sea shell, a small first part is already a sea shell,
and was the smaller animal's shell; rings and rings more are added on by
growth. The shell has the nature of an action track, it is process
concretized. The body is also like that, a record, an action track.
When aspects of en#3 get reinvolved in life process, they are thereby also
en#2 (both within and outside the skin-envelope body).
The process is body-en#2 and goes on in body-en#3. But only some results
of life become en#3, only those in which it goes on. En#1 is what the
spectator observes all around the body, but the body also has its own
environment which it has made.
But if en#3 affects the body only if it is again en#2, is the distinction
only for a spectator? Of course it is one body, not two. En#3 can affect
the body only insofar as it re-enters en#2. But then it matters very much
that this en#2 is not all new; it is also already a product of this life
process. The process goes on in its own products. Say a different tree is
about to crash and hit the beaver -- the observer may see that it is about
to happen. But en#3 does not re-enter the process in that arbitrary way.
The very tree the beaver gnaws will not hit it. It will affect the beaver
in many ways once it is on the ground, but these will be importantly
different from the intrusion of a tree that was not already en#3. The body
implies the environment that the body already "is." Life happens largely
with environments that life has produced or modified. The process goes on
largely in its own products.
The main "environment" of any animal is its species members, other animals
like it. These are products of the en#2 process of the specie. In that
sense they are quite obviously en#3 (and, when something is ongoing, en#2).
By far the greater proportion of animal activity is with and towards them.
The mother for the infant, female and male for each other, the group for the
individual, these are crucial environments. We must not take the physical
environment as our basic model of environment, although that too will often
already be en#3 -- already organized by the life process when the current
life process draws it in as en#2.
En#3 is the cement you walk on, the mole's hole, the bee hive, the ant
hill, and our bodies and theirs. The life process (en#2) makes itself an
environment in which it then goes on further. We can call it the
"home-made" environment, or the "domesticated environment,"-- en#3.
The use of the word "in" is as yet unclear (when I say that the process
goes on "in" en#3) because we do not wish to begin with any clear notion of
space. We have and use our space, of course, but let us permit new concepts
of space to arise from our interactional concepts. (We will "derive" the
distinction between "{external" and "internal" in VIIB. Many quite
different kids of space can be generated from the process (both conceptually
and experientially) as we will see. So let us allow this two-directional
"in" to stand.
What "inside" and "in" means is no simple question. The simple "in" of a
skin envelope assumes a merely positional space in which a line or plane
divides into an "outside" and an "in." But the ground pressure is exerted
not just on the sole of the foot but all the way up into the leg and the
body. From most any single bone of some animal paleontologists can derive
not just the rest of the body but also the kind of environment and terrain
in which the animal lived. In breathing, oxygen enters the
bloodstream-environment and goes all the way into the cells. The body is in
the environment but the environment is also in the body, and is the body.
We can say that en#3 participates in en#2, or we can say that the body-en#2
process goes on in the en#3.
.
En#0 is a fourth type. Something may some day affect the life process and
be en#2, but is not now. This has never happened, and is not now any
creature's en, not even the spectator's. In the seemingly infinite richness
of the unborn something may happen which has not yet, and will then be
definable in terms of the process in which it participates. Let us allow
ourselves to talk of this now. We don't want to say it plain isn't. Since
this has no reality as en#2, and since en#3 is the result of en#2, we need a
term for "environment" that has never functioning in a life process.
En#0 is not what does function but has not been recognized. Vast reaches of
the universe are involved in our process; those are all already part of
en#2. En#0 is that with which some en#2 might come to be, but has not.. (We
need not assume that what is must become en.) If something new enters en#2,
it is determined as much by life process as by en#0.
But is en#0 spatially distinct from what is already en? Or may it be right
here in what is participating? Obviously we must choose the second, if we
choose at all, because the space relation is as yet undefined.
In these definitions process is first. We don't assume the "body" and the
"environment" and then put them together. Later we will develop terms to
speak of "the body." Right now it is b-en#2.
With later terms we will be able to say what part of en#3 is the body.
Body structure is always involved in some processes, else it disintegrates.
It is a structure from process, for further process, and only so.
Body and en#2 and #3 imply each other because each is part of one
organization that includes the other. Each functions as it does only in
this wider functioning organization. This use of "imply" stems from the
fact that the whole event is already referred to, when we think only of the
body, or only of the en.
CHAPTER II. FUNCTIONAL CYCLE (FUCY.)
Let us not begin by simply assuming that we live and think within an old
model of time. Although we use linear time since it is inherent in our
language and experience, other kinds of time are inherent in them as well,
perhaps kinds of time that have never been explicated before. Let us see
what model of time develops from explicating the explication process. No
explication is ever equivalent to what (.....) it explicates. "Explication"
and "process" have time implicit in them, of course, but not only linear
time. Let the present, past, and future arise later from the process, as we
did in Section I, when we used the words "body" and "environment" to say
that they are one interaction process. Then we can distinguish them later
with new terms that develop from the processes.
In the old model of linear time-bits we would have to say, for example,
that a given bit of foot-pressure implies three different ground-pressure
bits: one, by resisting, first enables the foot to press; a second is equal
and opposite to the foot's pressure; a third ground-pressure is the result
of the foot's pressing. The fact that one bit needs all three is an ancient
problem with the linear model.
The "body" implies all three, if someone makes bits. So all three were
implied when we said (in chapter I) that "the body implies the environment,"
although only now do we see this.
A whole string of en#2 is implied by the (any this) body-en#2. And it may
imply many strings. If an animal hears a noise, many situations and
behaviors will be implicit in its sense of the noise, places to run to,
types of predators, careful steps, soundless moves, turning to fight, many
whole sequences of behavior. Meanwhile the animal stands still, just
listening. What it will do is not determined. Surely it won't do all the
implicit sequences -- perhaps not even one of just these but some subtler
response.
I say that hunger implies feeding, and of course it also implies the en'#2
that is identical with the body. Hunger implies feeding and so it also
implies food. It might imply the chase to get the food which may be far
away. Hunger also implies digesting, defecating, scratching the ground to
bury the feces, getting hungry again. These are a string of en#2s as well as
ways in which the body will be.
If digestion is my model instance, then the process is cyclical. Hunger
also implies getting hungry again after defecating and sitting a while. I
call this a "functional cycle." In such a cycle any "this" event implies
all the rest, all the way around. But let us not decide that the sequence
is simply predetermined, as is usually assumed.
Also in walking no single foot-pressure-ground-pressure-event simply is.
If there were suddenly such a single is, the animal would fall. Its weight
is already on the way to... (Momentum cannot be expressed as mere change of
location.) The "bit" moves the animal over. Or, it might be a bit near the
beginning, the increasing foot-pressure-ground-pressure with the weight
coming onto the foot. Any bit to which one might point implies the whole
movement of walking. Any occurring is also an implying of further
occurring. And, each bit implies something different next.
If a spider is taken off its half-finished web and placed elsewhere, it
goes on as soon as it can, spinning where it left off. It spins outwardly
the rest of the net which thus has a hole in it. Like digestion, its
web-spinning process cannot just begin again in the middle. The events
cannot follow in just any order. More intelligent animals can re-include
feedback from what they did in ways which would let them begin at the
beginning of an interrupted action, but even so this involves quite a
different sequence than an uninterrupted action. Living cannot well be
thought of as unit events related to other events only by position, that is
to say single events that one could rearrange in any order. I don't mean
that anyone claims that living events can occur in any order. But why this
is not possible is thought of only in terms of externally imposed
relationships of things in an observer's space. Let us instead allow the
spider to generate time and continuity. The spider's own process has its
own order. The rest of the web will remain implied until the environment #2
cooperates in the occurring of the rest of the net. Each occurring is also
an implying, and this stays the same unless it is changed by an
environmental occurring that has a certain very special relation to the
implying.
Life process is "temporally organized," but here this does not mean only
that someone notices hunger coming before eating. It means rather that
hunger is the implying of eating. And eating? There is that special
relation again: If hunger is the implying of eating, then eating is the
"....." of hunger. The term we want is implicit in the "....." and when we
get the term it will do to our "....." what eating does to hunger. We can
try out saying that eating satisfies hunger, that it carries out what hunger
implies, that eating carries the hunger into some sort of occurring. Hunger
is the implying of eating (the "need" for food we say, making a noun out of
this implying). Then eating is the satisfaction (another noun). The nouns
make separate bits out of the process. But actually it's no fun eating if
you're not hungry while eating. The eating happens only with hunger. Eating
happens into hunger. The bits have both in them. The process is both
implying and occurring, A bit of life process is always also the implying
of further bits. Right here "implies" means just this well known and little
understood fact.
Time is generated by the sequence. But the further parts of the cycle (all
of them, or the next one) do not look like this one. Hunger doesn't look
like eating, which in turn doesn't look like defecating. Implying in this
sense is again non-ikonic, non-representational, (as we found in I).
The whole cycle of ensuing events is, in a way, here now, at one point. We
can say that the whole sequence is ongoing. We can say that hunger is being
about to search for food, find it and eat. This "is", and our world
"implies" (in just this use, here) speak from this relation: All living is
an occurring and also an implying (of .....).
Implying has (makes, brings, is .....) time, but not only the linear merely
positional time. Though far from clear (we are only beginning), we want the
sequence to define time for us. We did not begin with a clear notion of
time. Let us say that the relation between occurring and implying generates
time, rather than saying that life processes go on in time. (The latter
statement would involve an already assumed time.)
Now a caution: One might be tempted to say that each bit of occurring is
what the last bit implied. But this would be only the old linear model.
Later, in IVB and VII we will have developed the terms to derive our
capacity to think of time as a linear series of positions (past, present,
and future). We have those now, of course, but let us not assume that these
linear positions must be "basic," as if everything else must fit into them.
In VII we will develop terms for how one can remember something from before,
or imagine what has not yet occurred. We will be able to derive linear time
as a simpler case from a more intricate model of time from which much else
can be derived as well. Our primitive concept of "occurring into implying"
will elaborate itself more and more.
From the spectator standpoint we may know what will happen, because we have
often observed the same events ensuing. But let us not assume that the
process is a sequence of pre-determined events. Implying is not the same as
what will occur. Hunger is not eating. It doesn't contain a hidden
representation of eating. Let us not make the occurring-implying relation
into an equation. We don't need to assume that the process consists of
already-defined events that the spectator predicts at time one, observes at
time two, and remembers at time three. We need not assume that the implying
consists of defined units. In nature a myriad different ways of eating have
developed, and more may arise. The implicit is never just equal what will occur.
Implying is a part of occurring, but occurring is also equal to en. It is
body=en. The body implies and occurs in the en. But implying has a more
intricate sort of "is" than en. Occurring has this more intricate order
too, but only in regard to the next occurring. All occurring also implies,
so implying is part of every occurring. But implying is much more than just
the next event which the spectator has observed before.
Although open for further events, implying and occurring are always just
so, just how they are, not at all indeterminate (see RO and TBP), but
implying is more orderly than one set of b-en#2 events.
Implying is never just equal to occurring. Therefore implying is not an
occurring that has "not yet" occurred. It is not an occurring in a different
position on a time line.
So we see that implying is not what will occur. Nor is it ever right to say
that what has occurred is what was implied. We need more terms to become
able to speak from their relation.
So far the word "into" has been used to speak of that relation. We said
that the en occurs into the implying. Since en is part of occurring, we can
also say that occurring occurs into implying. This relation will soon
elaborate itself.
So far it is clear that it cannot be an identity.1*
In the old model everything is assumed to stay "the same" so that change is
explained by tracing identical units that are only rearranged. In the old
model the system of localizations and possibilities always remains the same.
Instead, let us begin with change. Later we will derive "the same" from change.
Occurring is change; something happens. Occurring into implying can change
the implying. The occurring sequence is also a sequence of changes in the
implying. So the sequence is not determined from the implying in one event.
The process is a changed implying all along the line.
We can go a step further: Since implying implies a next occurring, and
since occurring changes implying, therefore implying implies a change in
implying. It implies its own change. The sequence can be defined as the
implied changes in implying But those are not determined possibilities.
Since there is always an implying, we can say that occurring always
occurs-into an implying, but it does not always change the implying as it
implied itself changed.
But it is misleading to call it "change" as if it simply implied just
anything else. Implying implies something so intricate that only a very
special occurring "changes" it as it implies itself changed. Anything else
may disrupt the body or leave the implying unchanged -- still implying as
before. For example, while the animal is hungry something other than food
happens. Then the implying of feeding continues unchanged. Or, a predator
may chase it so that running may come to be implied. Or, the animal may be
killed. Since there is always implying, all occurring happens "into
implying," but not always as the implying implies. We can already say that
certain distinctions are coming here. Implying implies an occurring that
will change it so that it no longer implies as it did, but not because it
was disrupted, rather because what occurs relates to the implying in a
certain (not fully predetermined) way. More terms with which to think about
this relation will develop. --------------- end of Section II
---------------------------
Mary Hendricks Ph.D.
Focusing Institute
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 1997 18:56:41 +0900
From: koichiro matsuno/7129 <kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: new model
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
On Gene Gendlin's eventing (11/1); from Koichiro Matsuno
It seems to me that Gendlin's "occurring into implying" is both
rational and existential.
>In the old model of linear time-bits we would have to say, for example,
>that a given bit of foot-pressure implies three different ground-pressure
>bits: one, by resisting, first enables the foot to press; a second is equal
>and opposite to the foot's pressure; a third ground-pressure is the result
>of the foot's pressing. The fact that one bit needs all three is an ancient
>problem with the linear model.
When one bit requires all of the three in a simultaneous manner, this
would reduce to Newton's third law of action and reaction in a globally
synchronous time (i.e., Newtonian time). Action and reaction have to be
counterbalanced in the present perfect tense, the latter of which is to
be guaranteed by the supposed simultaneity and synchronicity between the
two. Nonetheless,
>[t]he "body" implies all three, if someone makes bits.
>Any bit to which one might point implies the whole
>movement of walking. Any occurring is also an implying of further
>occurring.
What is implied here is the law of action and reaction in a locally
asynchronous time, or equivalently, in the mode of the present
progressive tense. Moreover, the law of action and reaction in the
present progressive tense implies both the law in the present perfect
tense frozen in the record and the same law occurring further in the
present progressive. It is at this point where one can see the genesis
of a globally synchronous time out of locally asynchronous ones.
As a matter of fact, movement of any sort in the mode of the present
progressive tense has to be concatenated to its rational and objective
description in the present perfect tense, while precipitating further
movement in the present progressive tense. Any movement is both rational
and existential. It is rational when expressed in the present perfect
tense, while existential in the present progressive tense. The meeting
point of rationality and existentiality seems to be the birthplace of
time that we understand at least empirically.
Experience in progress can be neither rational nor logical because
the present progressive tense does not fulfill the principle of the
excluded middle. We can say both "We are completing our job" and " We
are not completing our job" in a mutually non-exclusive manner. In
contrast, any experience, once completed, has to observe the principle
of the excluded middle. We cannot say both "We have completed our job"
and "We have not completed our job" interchangeably. What is more,
experience expressed in the present tense is too much because there is
no experience to be valid at any present moment. Modernists sticking
to empirical science in the mode of the present perfect tense are right
unless they use the present tense for describing completed experiences.
Likewise, postmodernists being sympathetic to existential experiences
are right if they restrain themselves form using the present tense. If
someone says "Anything goes", it sounds quite pre-postmodern because of
its unconditional positiveness in the present tense. The principle of
the excluded middle has to be observed there. If one substitutes
"Nothing" for "Anything", its logical conseqeunce is "Nothing goes".
Despite all of these, however, our constant reference to the
present tense is irresistable and inevitable, even in this posting
of mine. One way out might be to figure out a scheme of employing
the mode of the present tense without being charged of violating the
principle of the excluded middle. One possibility for this is to
come up with an irreducible predicate carrying a vague implication
such as Gene's "occurring into implying". I have tried as a candidate
of indefinite irreducible predicates "internal measurement" intrinsic
to any material bodies in our empirical world. Making statements in
the present tense carrying predicates of indefinite implication is
almost like walking on a tight rope spanned over the abyss looking
into existentiality in the present progressive tense on one hand and
rationality in the present perfect on the other.
Koichiro Matsuno
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 97 23:45:57 JST
From: Patrick Heelan <heelan@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu>
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: response to Crownfield, Matsuno, Rosen
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
I have been following this ongoing discussion among Bickhard, Crownfield,
Matsuno, and Rosen with interest, and want to say that many of the problems
articulated, say, concerning OBJECTIVITY, INVARIANCE, SUBSTANCE-CRITIQUE,
AND EMERGENCE have histories which have already done some of the background
work of this discussion.
Bickhard writes: "The pejorative connotations of "objectivity" seem to be
blocking an entire domain of discussion.... Arguably the most important
aspect of the differentiation of an objective world is that of invariance -
invariance of process aspects to other process aspects. Invariance of
certain kinds with respect to our own viewpoints and actions yields notions
of objects, for example. Frame invariances of other kinds yield relativity
theories and conserved quantities via Emmy Noether's theorem.... One
critical constraint on such a differentiation is that the developing
subjective pole and the developing objective pole must remain coherent with
respect to each other.... substance-property metaphysical frameworks must be
abandoned in favor of a process metaphysics. There are many reasons why
this is advisable. One is simply that emergence of any kind seems to be
impossible within a classical particle framework..."
Heelan: That may be so, but there are already helpful understandings of
objectivity in the philosophical literature that open up the field for 1. a
coherent account of subjectivity and objectivity, and 2. taking invariance
to be the substitute for the traditional Aristotelian (not to mention, the
modern Lockean!) notion of substance. Edmund Husserl's noetic-noematic
analysis is based, I believe, on the centrality of invariance in the new
geometrically inspired mathematical physics of Gottingen where Husserl
worked in the same academic department at Gottingen as Hilbert, Klein,
Noether; that was during the Golden Years (1900-1930) when the agenda of
20th century physics was set. The Husserlean analysis subtly replaced the
older notions of substance/form with those of invariance/(phenomenological)
essence.
The stage was not yet set for emergence, because Husserl was too much of a
mathematician and classical scientific thinker to consider that
"phenomenological essences" were other than absolute and the possession of a
transcendental Ego. Two more moves had to be made to set the groundwork for
a philosophy of natural science that could entertain historicity and
emergence. Both moves were made by Heidegger.
1. The first was to make the "phenomenological essence" of "die Sache
selbst" -- the given (cultural) object -- historical, socio-cultural, and
perspectival.
2. The second was implied by Heidegger's critique of "theory" (both
scientific and perceptual) as "present-at-hand", that is, as missing the
ontological dimension on account of which the object is understood and
grasped as belonging to the historical manifestation of Being. From
Heidegger's critique there follows the analysis I gave in my posted paper
that proves the logical necessity of linking explanatory theory with
cultural praxis. In the case of natural scientific research, the cultural
praxis is the culture of laboratory science; this will later be supplemented
by public technological fora created by the new research. Within the
laboratory, theory functions as the condition of possibility of the cultural
praxis; it rules the engineering of the laboratory by means of which some at
least of the "theoretical entities of science" are delivered to observers as
"cultural entities." Engineers design equipment (by theory) so that new
cultural products can be produced; similarly, hammers are engineered (by
theory) so that houses can be built -- hammers and houses, just like
hammering and house-building, are distinct perspectives where the former is
logically ordered to the latter as means to end (see my posted paper). It
is then a mistake to state that scientific observations are "theory-laden",
if by "theory" one means (with R.N. Hanson and the grand tradition)
"explanatory theory."
The EMERGENCE through science of new furniture of the world follows
naturally as a consequence of cultural development, where new problems
engender new theories, and new theories engender (in the laboratory and
later in the larger world) new cultural objects, with names that, perhaps
falsely, suggest their non-historicity.
Bickhart introduces the very difficult question of the emergence of
rationality. This seems to me to come down to the question of the
appearance of language among primates. Is language just a tool for the
expression of what is already understood in the pre-theoretical and
pre-categorial life but set free by language to create a new entity,
history?
Patrick A. Heelan
William A. Gaston Professor of Philosophy
Georgetown University
Washington DC 20057
http://www.georgetown.edu/heelan
Tel: (202) 687 8021; Fax: (202) 687 8039
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 10:58:40 -0500 (EST)
From: DaddyStern@aol.com
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: new model
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
To Koichiro
from David Stern.
Please excuse the basicness of my question, but I am a dolt when it comes to
grammar. I have been reading w/ confused interest about your use of the term
"present progressive" and I would love you to explain this to me, either as
part of the discussion or ex-discussion.
thanks in advance,
david
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Fri, 7 Nov 1997 22:40:44 -0400
From: "Steve Rosen" <ROSEN-S@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: Catching up on my responses
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
>From Steve Rosen to Gene Gendlin, Mark Bickhard, Patrick Heelan and
Koichiro Matsuno
(1) I was very happy with Gene's cogent introductory exposition of
his process model, of "eventing happening into its own implying and
carrying its own implying forward." Gene says, I want my model to be
usable BOTH as if it were a usual conceptual model AND as our own
process." I'd like to focus especially on how these two CROSS. Would
you agree that there would be something UNusual about a conceptual
model that is intimately and KNOWINGLY crossed with our own process?
Just what is the nature of the difference between a conceptual model
that is consciously crossed with our own process, and the old models
which, though crossed with our experiential/bodily process, denied
said process? The difference evidently would involve MORE than what
the models are about. The consciously crossed model would reach back
into itself. So both concept and experience would be present on
both the conceptual and experiential "sides." It might help a little
to think of the sides as sides of a Moebius strip.
(2) As Mark Bickhard knows, I continue to be in strong agreement with
him on the critical importance of a process metaphysics, assuming the
meaning of the term "metaphysics" can be carried forward from its
old, abstractly universaling connotations.
According to Mark's 11/1 post, an essential theme of the conference
is:
> how to reject ... notions of [absolute] objectivity without also
> falling into a pure idealism with accompanying relativism - without
> losing an "objective" world.
A phenomenological answer to this question is that we must find a way
to include LIVED (i.e., non-idealized) subjectivity.
Mark goes on to say:
> We cannot ... capture in
> any full sense an experiential pre-subjective and pre-objective
> process. We could not even ask any such questions in such a
> state. So understanding the process of differentiation is a
> matter of philosophical and theoretical exploration, not only
> of description.
I completely agree with Mark that "understanding the process of
differentiation is a matter of philosophical and theoretical
exploration." The issue I would raise is whether it must be ONLY
that, if we are using the terms "philosophical" and "theoretical" in
the old sense that denies their crossing with lived experience. What
I am saying is that the meaning conceptual activity has had for us
can be transformed in such a way that it may be brought into full
partnership with the experiential. I believe Gendlin's work
demonstrates that we can indeed gain a felt sense of the experiential
at the same time we are engaged in philosophical work. The two need
not be mutually exclusive.
> An existential focus that cannot accommodate the invariances of the
> world is idealistically adrift.
Agreed. I suggest we require a DUAL focus, one that would deliver the
dialectic of the invariant and noninvariant.
Finally, I would like to say that I am much in accord with Mark's
closing statement:
> It is the assumed
> absolute objectivity of rationality that is at the heart of the
> problematics of modernism, and it is a naive rejection of such
> modernistic notions without any replacement for them that is
> at the heart of the problematics of post-modernism.
(3) I appreciate Patrick Heelan's hermeneutic approach, which
emphasizes the imprint on science of the historically conditioned
workings of Being. I've been thinking about the relationship between
cultural practice and science as given in hermeneutics, on the
one hand, and the Gendlinian practice of coming from bodily
intricacy, on the other. I would love to hear Patrick's views on
this.
(4) In his post of 10/31, Koichiro Matsuno spoke of actualizing the
nonlocal quantum state by making a "nonlocal container." Knowing of
his sensitivity to the importance of concrete self-reference, I ask
Koichiro whether the fashioning of the "non-local container" would
require that WE OURSELVES, in our lived subjectivity, be
proprioceptively incorporated as part of the process. Must not the
"nonlocal container" entail SELF-containment? Putting it in
Koichiro's terms, must we not engage the present progressive mood to
construct the "nonlocal container"? And this brings me to my response
to Matsuno's post of 11/3.
I felt very much attuned to what Koichiro said about the present
progressive and present perfect tenses in that post (which was a
response to Gene's process model post). But I want to ask him for
a little clarification on his last couple of paragraphs. Or let me do
this: I will give my own tentative take and hope for his response.
Here are the two paragraphs:
> Experience in progress can be neither rational nor logical
because
> the present progressive tense does not fulfill the principle of the
> excluded middle. We can say both "We are completing our job" and "
We
> are not completing our job" in a mutually non-exclusive manner. In
> contrast, any experience, once completed, has to observe the
> principle
> of the excluded middle. We cannot say both "We have completed our
> job"
> and "We have not completed our job" interchangeably. What is more,
> experience expressed in the present tense is too much because there
> is
> no experience to be valid at any present moment. Modernists sticking
> to empirical science in the mode of the present perfect tense are
> right
> unless they use the present tense for describing completed
> experiences.
> Likewise, postmodernists being sympathetic to existential
> experiences
> are right if they restrain themselves form using the present tense.
> If
> someone says "Anything goes", it sounds quite pre-postmodern
> because of
> its unconditional positiveness in the present tense. The principle
> of
> the excluded middle has to be observed there. If one substitutes
> "Nothing" for "Anything", its logical conseqeunce is "Nothing
> goes".
>
> Despite all of these, however, our constant reference to the
> present tense is irresistable and inevitable, even in this posting
> of mine. One way out might be to figure out a scheme of employing
> the mode of the present tense without being charged of violating
> the
> principle of the excluded middle. One possibility for this is to
> come up with an irreducible predicate carrying a vague implication
> such as Gene's "occurring into implying". I have tried as a
> candidate
> of indefinite irreducible predicates "internal measurement"
> intrinsic
> to any material bodies in our empirical world. Making statements
> in
> the present tense carrying predicates of indefinite implication is
> almost like walking on a tight rope spanned over the abyss looking
> into existentiality in the present progressive tense on one hand
> and
> rationality in the present perfect on the other.
My provisional reaction to what Koichiro wrote:
It seems he is saying that the gap between the present perfect --
associated with rationality -- and the present progressive --
correlated with existentiality -- cannot be bridged in any full-
fledged way, one that entails an aspect of immediacy. He appears to
suggest that, for this reason, we must be satisfied with predicates
that, in their INDEFINITENESS, allow a kind of indirect reference to
present progressive existentiality. Is that what you were saying,
Koichiro? If so, let me respond.
I take it that the indefiniteness of the predicate creates the
opening for present progressive existentiality. But it seems to me
that, to rely on the INDEFINITENESS of the conceptual side for the
opening to the experiential side -- as if, by negating one, the other
is realized -- is to maintain a subtle division between concept and
experience that will block the fluid passage between them. I would
propose the alternative of "embodied self-reference." That is, rather
than softening the focus on the predicate by rendering it vague, we
MOVE BACK INTO that predicate in a proprioceptive, concretely self-
referential way, so that its present progressive, pre-predicative
roots are knowingly engaged. It may be that predicates with certain
characteristics may especially lend themselves to such a
proprioceptive move. You won't be surprised to hear that the Klein
bottle is my prime candidate for such self-predication!
But again, Koichiro, I may be way off in my reading of you and would
very much value your comments.
Steve Rosen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 16:08:18 +0900
From: kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: new model
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
To David Stern on the present progressive (11/7) and
to Steve Rosen on indefiniteness (11/7); form Koichiro Matsuno
David's comment sounds really tough to me, though I belatedly put
my another Specific on the related subject "The Present Tense: An
Impossible Dream?" on the APM webpage only yesterday (11/9). The best
response I could think of may be to make myself most vulnerable.
My first point is on our supposed easiness with utilizing
statements in the present tense upon the fact that we have the present
memory of past events. Since those past events remain invariant in the
record by definition, our present memory of an invariant in the past
can serve as a vehicle of objectifying such an invariant in the mode of
the present tense. The other side of the same coin, however, is that an
invariant characteristic intrinsic to the present tense could quite
easily be extended into those events yet to come if perception is taken
independently of action. (Gene Gendlin cautioned it repeatedly). This
seems to be an unwarrantable outstepping on the part of the present
tense. A single most devastating aspect of the present tense is to
seduce us to view perception as being independent of action.
The second point is that the present progrerssive tense is action-
oriented on the spot and makes no commitment to events yet to come.
Perception could be sanctioned only when it is accompanied by action.
This intrinsic intimacy between perception and action in the present
progressive is not limited to human beings. Animals in the wild are
also on the same boat in this regard, though they might not be able to
objectify their ongoing action in the present progressive tense as we
do.
The third point is that the biggest difference between we human
beings and animals in the wild is that we can objectify things in
the present progressive tense. Since the present progressive turns
into the present perfect with the progression, there could be a
possibility to salvage a descriptive objectivity out of the present
progressive.
The fourth point is on a likely possibility of appreciating the
present tense in the mingle-mangle of both the present perfect and
the present progressive tense. Following much the same way as making
the present memory of past events a carrier of the present tense,
one may be able to make the present self reflecting upon its own
progressive action be another carrier of the present tense. Steve's
diagnosis on this point in terms of "embodied self-reference" is
actually what I meant by "indefiniteness" by which I have tried to
salvage the present tense. This is about experience per se, not about
concept as Steve aptly pointed out. Memory of the past turns the past
into the present, while the self reflecting upon itself turns the
present progressive into the present. The memory can be objectified
and accordingly conceptualized whereas the self reflecting upon itself
can be at most implicit in what is going to happen.
In short, what makes the present tense accessible to us could be
either the present memory of the past or the present self involved
in perception-action complex in progress. Perhaps, we are facing
a situation of how could we legitimately figure out the scope of the
present tense. It seems to me that the criteria sanctioning the
present tense are changing.
I don't know how much in the above could survive your scrutiny.
Regards
Koichiro Matsuno
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 10:03:32 -0500
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
From: Mary Hendricks-Gendlin <mgendlin@rivertown.net>
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: novelty in language and practice
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Length: 5518
Status: RO
From Gene Gendlin
TO KOICHIRO MATSUNO: Why a tightrope between the two kinds of time? We can
derive the usual present-perfect model FROM a wider model of "basic" events
that are eventing and carry implying forward.
No, I don't agree that the past becomes present. I don't think we should
let the past be the remembered past. This requires the observer, someone
who perceives and retains pictures. That must not be used in the basic
eventing, or we're back to the usual idealized observer connecting in time.
(We can develop and derive this FROM the following:)
In the wider model past, present and future are not positions on a line,
and not equal except for their position, not distinguished by positions
(which have to be relative to each other and require Kant's uniting). Let's
not let the time be external to events, and put on them.
Rather, if our basic model is eventing (progressive present), each present
bit already carries its own past forward, is a carrying forward of its own
past, generates what the past now IS by carrying ("it") forward as this
progressing.
And the future is something quite different; it is the implying which is
always again here. It never becomes past.
Why keep to one unstableness between the two kinds of presents? With more
terms we can let the new model stand, and derive the old one for narrower uses.
I am happy with your bringing up action and animals! The trouble with the
old model is that it makes passive dead points the model instance. No
implying, no eventing of its own.
We can derive the old model: If eventing always goes BACK in order to
carry the implying FORWARD, it is like a Kline bottle or (for me) the letter
theta which reaches behind itself and comes through itself forward. This
can be SIMPLIFIED into a mere line, yielding the old positional model (if
someone observes and remembers). But this cannot be "basic" because we
cannot derive the progressive model from it.
One would use the term "indefiniteness" only if definiteness were the basic
background model. I'm against doing that. That's a part of postmodernism:
that I think we don't need: their way of rendering everything that we might
be interested in as the negation of the old model.
What do you think? Can we provide a new one?
-------------------
JOHN SHOTTER, thank you very much; those quotes are beautiful, just what I
needed!
-----------------
What SUNDARARAJAN quotes from Heidegger is the affirmation that language is
not only a formed system, but also a new-forming capacity. I think the
current postmodernism has lost this, renders it negatively as the rupture of
conceptual form.
-------------------
KOMPRIDIS' defense of disclosure affirms this as well.
I am also happy to see Dewey brought back -- a richer understanding of
PRACTICE -- like language capable of fresh disclosure, not just seemingly
nothing but old forms (or at most, old forms contradicting themselves).
Like many of us you are saying that "reflexivity" brings FURTHER steps.
Re-entering our own process moves it in ways that could not have been
derived from the form of the spot at which we entered it. "The
extraordinary is internal" to practice. Yes!!
Can you do with "ethical responsibility" what Sundararajan and you did with
language and what you did here with practice (fresh disclosure, not a code)?
What makes something a "criterion" if it emerges freshly and is
extraordinary? But this must be possible since old criteria have to have
been new once. Dewey shows how criteria develop internal to practice. You
have to be right.
---------------
TO WOLFGANG WELSCH:
The relativism I would reject is a menu of contradictory formulations
floating alone, with nothing between.
Yours is already beyond that, not relative but (as you say) "relative TO"
(you call it) "context."
But what now is "context?" Must it be only some formulated discourse or
framework, or can it be a situation? I think frameworks WORK-IN situations
and experience. There they bring out much more than just themselves.
That's why a relativism-menu of mere formulations seems poor to me, since
many of them always cross and function together in any experience.
-------------------
TO MARILYN NISSIM-SABAT
Hello!
I didn't intend to imply that Husserlians or Wittgensteinians or any
scholarly group should drop their philosophies and become just APM. That
would be a great loss.
I wouldn't like to lose Husserl and have left only certain planks, and
those only recast, at that. I am not asking Husserl or you to BE after
postmodernism. Husserl is likely to last much longer than postmodernism.
I meant only that FOR THE PURPOSE OF THE CONFERENCE I am asking people to
allow their different philosophies to contribute certain aspects in it which
can be RECAST SO THAT IT BECOMES EVIDENT THAT postmodernism cannot undermine
them.
As you recognized, I was defending Husserl but I didn't mean to imply that
he needed this.
Thank you for leading me to make myself clear. I DO hope all of you will
help us to grasp and use much FROM your philosophy without implying that
careful readings are devalued, as if tearing out and recasting stuff for APM
should replace them.
Gene Gendlin
Mary Hendricks Ph.D.
Focusing Institute
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 12:43:24 +0900
From: koichiro matsuno/7129 <kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
Message-Id: <199711130343.MAA16102@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: on eventing, again
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 1547
Status: RO
On Gene Gendlin's eventing, again; from Koichiro Matsuno
Eventing seems to have at least three different classes;
1) eventing in itself in the present progressive tense
yet to be objectified;
2) talking about eventing in the present progressive
tense to be objectified by someone;
3) talking about the eventing in the present perfect
tense.
As far as eventing in itself is concerned, there could not
be much difference between we ourselves and dogs on the street.
The role of process metaphysics must be crucial in connecting
eventing in itself to talking about eventing. This must be
an issue Mark Bickhard and Steve Rosen have raised. Talking
about the completed eventing depends upon how we understand
the present. But, the present is quite fragile as in Gene's
remark on "unstableness" between the two kinds of presents,
namely, between the implying which is always here and carrying
forward of its own past. Patrik Heelan's hermeneutics seems to
enter here. Time has been thought at least as a metaphysical
device to circumvent such an unstableness, though might be riding
on a tightrope.
Gene's analysis on indefiniteness is right. I would like to
buy it.
I have to run for catching a train to the airport.
Koichiro Matsuno
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Mon, 8 Dec 1997 15:21:40 +0900
From: kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: Request for Clarification
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
From Koichiro Matsuno
I completely share with Steve Rosen the same concern on
>clarification of grammatical tenses:
Since I am also seeking a legible foundation for the
grammatology of tensoral framework (a la Ted Kisiel), let
me put here my current trial in this direction, though
not yet well done. This is a draft of the abstract of my
paper which has to be sent to the editor of a journal by
the end of this month. The tentative title of the paper
is "Clock and its Triadic Relationship". Part of the
abstract reads:
Any movement in progress is descriptively in the mode
of the present progresive tense. The movement naturally
transfers with itself the present progressive into the
past progressive tense, and further into the present
perfect tense if the movement is perfected. Once a
dynamic description in the mode of the present tense
as the standard norm of the discourse is attempted, it
is required to identify what is there at the present
moment. If the present progressive tense is naturally
transferred to the present perfect tense, the presence
of perfected movement could be guaranteed globally at
any present moment and be associated with the global
time that is uniform and homogeneous globally. Our
natural languages in themselves are grammatically
potential in the capacity of accommodating a global
time as explicated in the form of Kantian-Newtonian time.
On the other hand, however, if the present tense is
naturally transferred into the past progressive tense
first instead of directly into the present perfect as
it should be most the case, what is present there is the
activity for fulfilling the principle of the excluded
middle. For the observation in the past progressive tense
saved in the record would have to fulfill the principle,
otherwise the integrity of the record would be lost. The
presence of the activity for fulfilling the principle of
the excluded middle is sought in the local agents being
responsible for the movement in progress. Time associated
with the presence of the capacity for fulfilling the
principle of the excluded middle is local. Our natural
languages are also potential in the capacity of
accommodating local times in themselves.
Whether local times could eventually be synchronized
among themselves is exclusively an empirical matter. Until
this empirical problem is settled, it has to be observed
that there is an incommensurable grammatical difference in
distinguishing the two notions of time, the global and the
local.
When I talked about the presence of perfected movement,
something like a hockey puck sliding on an ice rink almost
frictionlessly was in mind. Also, the principle of the
excluded middle seems to inevitably apply to the progressive
mode. When I was walking through the crowd as avoiding
collisions with other people, the avoiding activity has
successfully been conducted up to the point the record has
been registered, though the walking has not yet been completed.
My walking yet to come is going to avoid collisions with
other people, since walking and colliding exclude each other.
This has been what I have now. Perhaps, better explanations
may be out there.
Koichiro Matsuno
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 1997 17:00:55 -0500
From: Mary Hendricks-Gendlin <mgendlin@rivertown.net>
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: new time model
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
NEW TIME MODEL From Gene Gendlin
Lets consider time as an aspect of eventing (ala Aristotle and Heidegger).
Then we have the whole richness of aspects, strands, parameters .... of
EVENTS FIRST, and need not work out of an already abstracted time as such.
Secondly, LET EVENTING HAVE ITS OWN IMPLYING (drive, momentum, organizing
of its next eventing) as living things do. They organize their own next and
next, or rather, they ARE an organizing of nexts.
Thirdly,. Rather than those nexts being already determined and predicted by
Laplace, let each eventing be a change-in-next-organizing. That's how
human action is in situations. A situation is a bunch of next-implyings,
but any act or speech IS a change-in-that-implying.
Even what my seem to be just what "was implied" is a change-in-the
next-implying. It's just that it follows a usual story. Situations and
human life (dreams too) consist of stories; and even in the ones we're used
the situations change, of course, or there is no story.
Fourth, time is richer than the linear model. Seen within that model, time
is retroactive because the change in implying has its own kind of continuity
in terms how it was possible from the previous, but not implied in a
predetermined way. This is like when we write, we get to an edge which
implies something not yet clearly formed, which, when we formulate it, makes
us change what we had (even though what we had was just implied this next
which makes us change it retroactively). So implying always implies a
change in itself.
The liner model is purely positional -- I mean that the only difference
between present, past, and future is the position on a time line. Looking
right at any of it, you couldn't know which tense it is. Matsuno call this
"fully realized" or "completed," and identifies it with world time rather
than local time. I think that when we need the merely positional or
completed time we can derive it as a special case from a richer model.
In the richer model past and future have special characteristics of their
own, so that they are not positional. Every present IS also an
incorporation of the past -- quite without anyone remembering and keeping a
record. Every present IS also an implying of a next, as I said above, i.e.
future and past are strands of each evenntING.
I would welcome comments on this, so that we can go further into any aspect
of this. Also, I would appreciate any comment on my worked-out model
available from our net page (A Process Model, concerning time see I-IVA)
from Gene Gendlin
Mary Hendricks Ph.D.
Focusing Institute
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 11:13:43 +0900
From: kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp
Reply-To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: new time model
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
On Gene Gendlin's new time; from Koichiro Matsuno
Insofar as we admit that your time read out of your watch
and my time read out of mine interact either conversationally,
figuratively or even physically, this picture would remind us
time as a whole fabric of dynamic processes. What concerns us
here is dynamics of time, instead of in time. Dynamics of time
is about Gendlin's "any process going on in the others", since
time permeates into anywhere and everywhere. Time is about any
local process whose body is all of the other ongoing processes.
This implies that time is necessarily internally connected.
Time as a sticky web-like fabric is dynamic also in time. All
of us are like miserable butterflies caught up in a gigantic
spider's net. This net is upon Bill Sterner's ontogenesis as a
complex of many items icluding different tense-profiles.
If somebody is allowed to think of a stop-and-run sequence
of still pictures of the net as a substitute of real dynamics
proceeding there, a global synchronous time referring to each
still picture might be available. Still, no one can get out of
the sticky net. Time as a sticky nebula coordinating itself by
itself is a source of paradoxes if one expresses it in the
present tense as with Steve Rosen's Klein Bottling. Such
paradoxes are inevitable because of the queer nature of the
"dynamics of time in time". One way to live with these paradoxes
is in the present progressive mode.
But, our time experience has very much been affected by the
stop-and-run sequence of still pictures. A merit of this scheme
is that we can have a worthwhile illusion of grasping a coordinated
whole in each still picture. Think of a long waiting line at the
counter of a major airline company at any metropolitan airport
during busy holiday seasons. The principle of coordinating the
queue there is "first come, first served". What underlies this
is that global time is shared by everybody. But, this is not so
in nature at large. Inflorescence of a grass proceeds in the
manner "last come, first served". At a certain stage of its
development, some units called spikelets appear at its base and
continue to appear in the direction toward the tip. Once
spikelets appear at the tip, maturation starts but is in the
direction opposite to the appearance of the spikelets. I got
this example from Jack Maze of Univ. British Columbia. The grass
does its own time business very well even if an innocent onlooker
may say it follows the "last come, first served" policy. In
contrast, I don't know what would happen at the airport if they
abandon the "first come, first served" policy.
Time as a coordinating principle on the global level is not
visible to local inhabitants inside, while time as any local
process is constantly carried forward by those who inhabit the
inside. This is part of what I have digested with Gene's new
model so far.
Koichiro Matsuno
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 22:26:48 -0500
Message-Id: <199712190326.WAA120314@node21.cwnet.frontiernet.net>
X-Sender: louiselu@pop3.frontiernet.net
X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Light Version 1.5.2
Mime-Version: 1.0
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
From: Louise Sundararajan <louiselu@frontiernet.net>
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: time and language
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Length: 683
Status: RO
Response to Matsuno
The "sticky web" you talk about sounds like Heidegger's formulation of
language, "We live in language as language." It seems to make sense even to
paraphrase Heidegger here, "We live in time as temporality." Your example
of "first comes, first served" is definitely a phenomenon of language and
culture. So, what's the difference between time and language, and can we
tease the two apart?
regards,
Louise Sundararajan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 1997 22:26:48 -0500
Message-Id: <199712221048.TAA26599@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: time and language
Content-Type: text
Content-Length: 2238
Status: RO
On Louise Sundararajan's time; from Koichiro Matsuno
Louise' living in time as temporality in the form of time
as the sticky web of time experiencing is a unitary whole
as much as our language is our whole practice in language. Both
time and language refer to the whole body of our experiences, but
time seems to be more inclusive in that the phenomenon called
language could have appeared in evolutionary time though the latter
(time) is an artifact cut out of the sticky web. If one dissects
the web into pieces and make them spatially uniform and homogeneous,
Bill Sterner's first order logic could resuscitate there because of
the invariant and completed nature of the uniformity and homegeneity.
Ever since our ancestors had started using stone hatchets to cut
out anything in the wild to their advantage, it became our norm
to cut the web to get something completed or perfected easily.
Once we accept inter-action as the most fundamental ingredient
of our experience, the dynamic movement thus derived would necessarily
be incomplete because the notion of completion remains odd against
interaction. (What would then the completion interact with?) Even the
whole evolutionary process proceeding on our Earth could be a
movement yet to be completed, in which one party's solution of a
problem constantly causes new problems to the others. Steve Rosen's
plea for practicing genuine dialogues may be met by our wishful
attitude that whatever we may say, we would be willing to accept
our incompleteness. At the same time, this practice may urge us
to face other tough issues of our basic institution, such as
copyright, authorship and priority. The underlying question is
whether individuated particulars could simply be pieces cut out
of the unitary whole or more than that, though, of course, we
recognize that there has been the long-held tradition of seeking
or getting something general or universal out of these individuals.
Koichiro Matsuno
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail:
apm-discuss-unsubscribe@rivertown.net
To obtain help on other commands (including accessing the archives):
apm-discuss-help@rivertown.net