From: Mary Hendricks-Gendlin <mgendlin@rivertown.net>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net <apm-discuss@rivertown.net>
Subjct : [APM-DISCUSS]: Matsuno
Time: 23 March 1998 8:50
TO KOICHIRO MATSUNO AND EVERYONE
from Gene Gendlin
I am at last reading your book (Protobiology, CRC Press) and find it very
exciting indeed. Let me tell everyone about it in my own words, and then I
hope you will correct any misunderstanding I may have.
Matsuno is laying the basis for a "physics of becoming" in contrast to the
familiar "physics of being." In the latter what happens at a given moment
in time is assumed to be fully determined, which means "the boundary
conditions" are fully known. Then what happens at all later times is also
fully determined. Only ONE SET of events is possible.
In his physics of becoming the conditions at the first moment are NOT FULLY
KNOWABLE, therefore MORE THAN ONE SET OF POSSIBILITIES may ensue.
The laws of physics (of motion and conservation) are all still maintained,
but the result is determinable only after the fact.
Matsuno cites some empirical studies in which the physics of becoming
applies. I will get to those in a moment.
What is so exciting about this is The WHOLE CLUSTER OF THEORETICAL CHANGES
that are closely interrelated to this, and make up a whole new physics of
becoming.
So Matsuno says that when the conditions at the start are not fully known,
the result might seem to be indeterminate, but it seems so only from the
perspective of the external observer. What happens is in fact DETERMINED
INTERNALLY by the cells or particles themselves, as each interacts with its
neighbors.
Matsuno thinks of the cells or particles as INTERNAL OBSERVERS.
The external observer measures from the outside -- and this is a big
problem because measurement of course involves some interaction with what we
measure. Therefore it is in practice often impossible to establish the
theoretical implication that the events are determined at each point.
Instead, Matsuno thinks of the cells and particles as INTERNAL "MEASURES".
And furthermore, there is no need to decide which is doing the measuring
and which is being measured, since they interact: THEY MEASURE EACH OTHER
These interactions are not predetermined, except that the basic lawfulness
will be achieved.
There is real indeterminacy in nature. This is not disorder but
openendedness in regard to the next event.
This also changes the usual statistical way of representing some of this,
including wave functions. This cannot be represented in the statistical
way since statistics assumes disorder where changes are not determined from
outside in advance.
Other basic conceptions of physics must similarly be reopened, since they
are derived from the old assumptions and have those built into them. He
cites entropy.
He says that this physics of becoming is the kind of physics that could
"found biology," that is to say it could underlie biology.
He does not mean that the physics of becoming applies only to biology.
Quantum mechanics can be understood as having this process of internal
measurement as its subject-matter.
Natural selection makes sense if the cells do it themselves -- that makes
sense to me, I'm always asking about the billions of "wrong" creatures which
would be required and have never been found... Matsuno says selection
EFFECTS the adaptive reproduction , instead of AFFECTING reproduction.
There is an active INTERNAL determining of process.
Since the cells themselves do the determining, Matsuno says they do an
active EQUILIBRIATING (rather than being in equilibrIUM from the start by
assumption).
So he attributes to them what he calls a kind of FINAL CAUSALITY by which
they achieve the fulfillment of the basic laws of physics in the outcome.
Retrospectively from the result one can determine what happened, but
looking forward from the introduced change there are many possibilities.
In the familiar "physics of being" the starting conditions are FULLY known.
A local change in those conditions -- introduced at some point -- changes
the whole system, since it is all derived from the conditions at time one.
SUCH A CHANGE IS ASSUMED TO CHANGE THE CONDITIONS INSTANTANEOUSLY.
In contrast, in Matsuno's physics of becoming the particles are not fully
determined from the outside by our theoretical assumptions. Instead, THEY
DO THE COMMUNICATING OF THE CHANGE, AND SO IT TAKES FINITE TIME FOR THE
EFFECT OF A SUCH A CHANGE TO REACH ACROSS THE SYSTEM AND ACHIEVE A RESULT
THAT EVENTUALLY FULFILLS THE LAWS OF CONSERVATION AND MOTION.
And he cites studies in which indeed this takes finite time where the old
physics assumes instantenaety. It seems that the living cells take time to
arrive at a result that fulfills conservation laws, but are quicker at it
than something rigid, which is the reverse of the theoretical prediction.
(Shouldn't it take time in any system?)
Matsuno also shows a contradiction with theory as such: Conservation is
supposed to change the whole system instantaneously whereas physics also
holds that nothing can be transmitted at greater than light velocity.
I have some questions and if they get clear I'd have a lot to say. But
first I want to check this much. Koichiro, please correct anything wrong in
it, and let me know if you have changed any of this since then. I also want
to talk it over with my two physicists. Gene Gendlin
Mary Hendricks Ph.D.
Focusing Institute
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From: kmatsuno <kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net <apm-discuss@rivertown.net>
Subject: RE: [APM-DISCUSS]: Matsuno
Time: 24 March 1998 13:02
On Gene Gendlin's Summary of "Protobiology"; from Koichiro Matsuno
Writing a book is tough, but reading it must be much tougher, I'm sure.
In this sense, Gene's statement:
>I am at last reading your book (Protobiology, CRC Press) and find it very
>exciting indeed.
sounds quite pleasing to me, indeed. All of the comments he made hit right
at the mark. What will follow below are some redundant additions.
>In his physics of becoming the conditions at the first moment are NOT FULLY
>KNOWABLE, therefore MORE THAN ONE SET OF POSSIBILITIES may ensue.
It may be the case that the whole sets are even uncountable.
>The laws of physics (of motion and conservation) are all still maintained,
>but the result is determinable only after the fact.
Physics we know of it today would lose nothing even if it accepts its
intrinsic incompetence of predicting the future.
> So Matsuno says that when the conditions at the start are not fully known,
>the result might seem to be indeterminate, but it seems so only from the
>perspective of the external observer. What happens is in fact DETERMINED
>INTERNALLY by the cells or particles themselves, as each interacts with its
>neighbors.
The external observer Gene referred to in the above is quite modest
and thoughtful. I really want to be acquainted with such a company. But, in
many cases, the external observer to whom a competent physicist intends
to assimilate him/herself comes quite easily to pretend to know everything
before the show gets started.
>These interactions [between doing the measuring and being measured] are
not
>predetermined, except that the basic lawfulness will be achieved.
>There is real indeterminacy in nature. This is not disorder but
>openendedness in regard to the next event.
This view renders any interaction of material origin to be constantly on
the move in the internalist perspective, that is to say, locally causative,
in sharp contrast to Newtonian-Kantian interaction in the latter of which
interaction is taken to be a guarantee of simultaneous coexistence of things
in the whole universe.
>He does not mean that the physics of becoming applies only to biology.
>Quantum mechanics can be understood as having this process of internal
>measurement as its subject-matter.
What should be intended in this regard is to understand quantum
mechanics without relying upon the time-honored notion of state. Once
state description is employed for whatever reason, its natual outcome
would be to succumb to an unintended acceptance of Newtonian-Kantian
interaction because of its congruence with the notion of state unique only
to the bird's eye perspective, instead of to the worm's. This means that
actual interaction takes time for its realization.
>And he cites studies in which indeed this takes finite time where the old
>physics assumes instantenaety. It seems that the living cells take time to
>arrive at a result that fulfills conservation laws, but are quicker at it
>than something rigid, which is the reverse of the theoretical prediction.
>(Shouldn't it take time in any system?)
If we try to understand actual interaction between a pair of arbitrary
bodies physically in its realistic sense, it would be required to recognize
that something serving as a signal must be propagated in between. The
intended receiver of the signal cannot tell what it will receive before it
has
actually received. The signal process could survive only in the present
progressive mode. Such a signal process is completely eliminated from the
physics of being in which communication (leading to a harmonious
coexistence of things in the universe) could be imagined to be instantaneous
without actually implementing such an instantaneous communication in
any sense of the words.
>Matsuno also shows a contradiction with theory as such: Conservation is
>supposed to change the whole system instantaneously whereas physics also
>holds that nothing can be transmitted at greater than light velocity.
>I have some questions and if they get clear I'd have a lot to say.
I may have openned a can of worms. In my Protobiology, I didn't mention
anything about the issue of time, but this issue serves as a connecting
thread. Once we accept the notions of state and interaction as a guarantee
of simultaneous coexistence, global synchronous times as with Newtonian-
Kantian absolute time, including its relativistic extension, has to be
observed
at all costs. In other words, if we accept global synchronous time, we would
have to live with state and instananeous communication even reluctantly. The
internalist perspective being friendly to the idea of communicative
interaction
and the like, on the other hand, would come to face the sturdy issue of how
small clocks inhabiting this world come to communicate their timings, while
reminding us that global synchronous time could be no more than a matter
of social convention. In fact, any relative motion of two bodies can be
seen
as a clock to a third party. How these clocks develop while being involved
in
timing with each other remains to be seen.
Koichiro Matsuno
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From: Steve Rosen <ROSEN-S@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net <apm-discuss@rivertown.net>; kmatsuno@voscc.nagaokaut.ac.jp <kmatsuno@voscc.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: Signaling and Timing
Time: 27 March 1998 3:29
Steve Rosen's reply to Gendlin and Matsuno, on the issue of signal
transmission and time:
Like Gene Gendlin, I have read Koichiro Matsuno's book on
PROTOBIOLOGY and have found that it contributes significantly toward
developing an effective process approach to natural science. I would
like to focus on a specific point made by Matsuno in his response to
Gendlin: the importance of signals in the interactions of local
agents. Please consider my comments as provisional, open to question,
revision, etc. What I'm attempting to do is clarify for myself, and
I hope for some others as well, the role that signal transmission
would play in an APM science.
On this question, Matsuno wrote:
> If we try to understand actual interaction between a pair of
arbitrary
> bodies physically in its realistic sense, it would be required to
recognize
> that something serving as a signal must be propagated in between.
The
> intended receiver of the signal cannot tell what it will receive
before it
> has
> actually received. The signal process could survive only in the
present
> progressive mode. Such a signal process is completely eliminated
from the
> physics of being in which communication (leading to a harmonious
> coexistence of things in the universe) could be imagined to be
instantaneous.
We all (Matsuno, Gendlin, myself, others?) agree that interaction
cannot be based on the *instantaneous* transmission of signals. This
implies that the clocking of interaction cannot be synchronized by a
universal "clock-across-the-world," as in the Newtonian-Kantian
modern clock. Interacting agents cannot co-exist simultaneously in
this way. In the conventional way of thinking about signal
transmission, which includes Einstein's modernist resolution of the
problem of relative reference frames, time is "spatialized," which
means that the universal clock, at one level or another, is still
presupposed. The postmodern, relativistic alternative to this is to
emphasize the irreducible *non*simultaneity of interacting agents.
Here agents are separated by a temporal chasm that makes it hard to
understand how they could interact at all. In such an approach, it
seems that a signal could not survive its passage from one
participant ot another. Of course, somehow it does survive. We do
have signal transmission (contra the implications of postmodernism),
yet there is evidently no universal space-time continuum to ground it
in (contra modernism). Given the latter, an effective account of
signal transmission would have to depart considerably from the
standard formulation. Matsuno appears to imply this when he says
that "the signal process could survive only in the present
progressive mode," for, conventionally, signal transmission is
described in the present tense or present perfect tense, which would
be consistent with modernism's non-processual space-time continuum.
I believe what needs to be clarified here is that, for the
propagation of signals to occur, the process could not be governed by
the sheer temporal succession of postmodernism any more than by the
pure spatial simultaneity of modernism.
The point can be analogically illustrated via a well-known phenomenon
whose orignal demonstration set the stage for the advent of Gestalt
psychology: the *phi phenomenon*. Consider two sources of
illumination placed several feet apart in a dark room. If one light
is turned on a short time after the other, an observer will perceive
there to be a *movement* between the lights. This sense of motion will
be absent if the time interval between the lights is too long, or if
there is no time interval at all, the lights being illuminated
simultaneously. Conventional thinking denies the reality of the
experience of motion; it is an "illusion," we are told. On the
conventional approach, we can accept as real that the illumination
events follow each other in sequence, or that they occur at the same
time; it is the *movement* between the lights whose reality is
unacceptable. Of course, in the Gestalt-phenomenological challenge to
convention, the whole idea is that the experience of motion is
*autonomous*, that it cannot be reduced to motionlessness. I suggest
that the motions of signals that are involved in the transactions of
local agents work in a manner that is analogous to the phi
phenomenon: The propagation of a signal cannot be reduced to static
simultaneity, as is conventionally done via the modernist tool of
calculus, which is based on the assumption that motion occurs in a
space-time continuum that itself is not in motion. Nor can the
transmission of signals be seen as somehow constituting an
epiphenomenon of a purely temporal relation, one that is simply non-
simultaneous. So I am suggesting that neither modernist spatiality
nor postmodern temporality can fully account for the exchange of
signals between local agents. I propose that, to understand the
signaling process, we require the dialectically processual "- ING,"
as in Gendlin's "event-ing," or my "Klein-bottl-ing."
To further illustrate the point, let me refer back to my work with
the Necker cube (see my web paper or its printed counterpart). In
viewing the reversible cube, the eye oscillates from one perspective
to the other, demonstrating the passage between dimetrically opposed
frames of reference. Whereas modernism would use abstract analysis to
render these perspectives simply simultaneous (in effect, Einstein
did this by establishing the abstract equivalence of all concrete
frames of reference in "relativistic" space-time), postmodernism is
content to accept the temporal disjunction between perspectives: we
see one perspective one moment, the other perspective in the next. In
the APM dialectical alternative I am proposing, the emphasis would be
placed neither on the completed realization of a single perspective
(the other being simply negated), nor on the abstract equivalence of
the two perspectives, but on the *motion between* perspectives.
Applying this to the problem of signal transmission, the propagation
of signals could not be understood exclusively in terms of already
completed action, but must be referred to the present-progressive
*act-ing process* - - as indeed Matsuno suggests in his PROTOBIOLOGY.
As I end my presentation, what concerns me is the manner in which I
have carried it out. To say that real interaction occurs in the
present progressive mode is to say that it is dialogical. But, alas,
my own conceptual offerring on this has more the feel of a
*monologue*. This brings me back to a question I have raised before:
how do we put our bodies -- which operate intercorporeally in the
present progressive mode -- where our concepts are? How does a
prosaic exchange of ideas among talking heads become more like a New
Orleans jam session -- but one that *retains* its philosophical
reflectiveness?
Steve Rosen
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From: kmatsuno <kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net <apm-discuss@rivertown.net>
Subject: RE: [APM-DISCUSS]: Signaling and Timing
Time: 27 March 1998 23:00
On Steve Rosen's Signaling and Timing; from Koichiro Matsuno
Steve referred to the iceberg hidden from the mere outer-
suface of a tip called a signal process as pointing out:
> What I'm attempting to do is clarify for myself, and
>I hope for some others as well, the role that signal transmission
>would play in an APM science.
Let me add just one footnote at this point.
It seems to me that the signal process is quite after-
postmodernistic. A good example of this is money. Money
serves as a means of facilitating any exchange of goods-and-
services, in spite of the fact that each bill is just a paper
carrying a picture of somebody and is useless of itself. Money
in my pocket is quite indefinite in what it will buy, but money
having gone through my pocket is quite definite in what it has
bought. Nonetheless, I always carry with me some amount of
money Money exercises its capacity it deserves only in the
present progressive mode. Money in the safe which cannot be
openned is just nothing. If we decide to talk about our daily
activities in terms of money or monetary transactions, it must
be dialogical and dialectical in the present progressive mode all
through the time.
But, of course, the above example is not good enough to
cope with Steve's another remark:
>what concerns me is the manner in which I
>have carried it out. To say that real interaction occurs in the
>present progressive mode is to say that it is dialogical. But, alas,
>my own conceptual offerring on this has more the feel of a
>*monologue*. This brings me back to a question I have raised before:
>how do we put our bodies -- which operate intercorporeally in the
>present progressive mode -- where our concepts are?
Is there any possibility to utilize the present tense (monologue)
while implying the present progressive mode in its real heart?
Koichiro Matsuno
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From: Mary Hendricks-Gendlin <mgendlin@rivertown.net>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net <apm-discuss@rivertown.net>
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: Response to Rosen and Matsuno
Time: 1 April 1998 13:31
March 30, 1998 from Gene Gendlin
To Koichiro Matsuno, Steve Rosen, and Everyone
Matsuno writes that physics would lose nothing if it accepted its "INHERENT
incompetence to predict the future." So, Koichiro, isn't it true that you
intend "the physics of becoming" to be the larger, within which "the physics
of being" would be a precipitate, a narrower result? At least I would argue
that this is so.
But then we have to stop thinking about the time of becoming as "local."
As local, the time of becoming seems to be WITHIN the positional time of
static Being.
Certainly I understand that "internal" time SEEMS local from the birds eye
view of simultaneous world time. You have beautifully opened a crack in it.
But what we would assert is more than a crack within it.
You show that EMPIRICAL findings do not obey some of the theoretical
axioms. You imply and I agree that they are superior to axioms.
Matsuno says: "any relative motion of two bodies can be seen as a clock to
a third body." Again I appreciate that your clocks open a crack in the theory.
But these cracks become much wider if we pursue them.
I would argue that we should not read signaling back into the time of
becoming, once your point has been made. Instead, let the empirical
interaction take over THE ROLE which signaling has in the old theory.
Signaling comes from Einstein maintaining the old theory, as you say
yourself. It maintains space time as the free-standing frame within which
empirical events must accommodate themselves at any price.
I have argued that time and space ARE GENERATED BY EVENTING, and are
ABSTRACT RESULTS OF EVENTING, NOT FREE-STANDING FRAMES within which all
eventing must fit itself.
We have to roll the old theory all the way back before Newton. I have to
review the well-known story for a minute.
Before Newton motion was thought of as relative. But motion was considered
to be nothing but a "change in location" (LOCOmotion, change of place), so
that the externally imposed location system was built into what motion is.
But motion was considered relative, as if it didn't matter whether the train
moves out of the station, or the station (and the world) moves back from the
train.
Newton's water bucket moving on a twisted string proved that there is a
difference. When the water is moving and not the bucket, the water behaves
differently than when the bucket moves and the water doesn't yet.
This seemed to "prove" that space time location does determine events.
Newton ought to have concluded instead, that an empirically moving object
is an entirely different kind of phenomenon than a stationary one (even at
successive locations). A moving truck has momentum, one stationary at
different points doesn't have. Today the regular physics admits that one
cannot measure momentum AND LOCATION at the same time.
Motion is not merely a change in our location system. Newton ought to
have interpreted his finding as indicating that AN EMPIRICALLY MOVING object
generates and determines its space and time, hence determines what moves and
what doesn't -- -- rather than the reverse, that our space and time
determine what moves.
But Newton kept the supposed superiority of our location system, as if it
has to be free-standing and come first, as if space-time relations between
passive points were like empirical interactions, and even superior to the
latter.
Kant saw that time and space are GENERATED. He said "I generate time by
drawing a line" (and taking the last bit with me to the next bit). Or in
counting he said we cannot get 3, only 1,1,1, unless the continuity of our
thinking-process takes the first 1 along to the second, and the 2 to the
third. So he knew that eventing is not "in time;" rather it generates time.
But he "formalized" the continuity as an external observer, instead of a
living process.
In Kantian-Newtonian positional time the bits are MERELY NEXT TO EACH
OTHER, so they need the observer to connect and relate them. In my theta
model and your INTERNAL model the "bits" relate themselves; hence THEY DON'T
NEED OBSERVERS. To say that they are "internal observers" is a way of
speaking that cracks the old system all right. So also your clocks. But
once cracked, I argue that we must not read the observer back in between the
bits, or we'll never be able to think about living process. Your INTERNAL
relations are INTERACTIONS, not merely POSITIONAL NEXT-TO-EACH-OTHER time
relations that need observers. Signaling consists inherently of external
relations. Once you have said that they do their own "signaling" we must
not really read signaling in, now that they don't need it.
Einstein, as you say, only re-established the priority of the
observer-location system. And of course, he did it with signaling -- all
those space ships reading each others' clocks is the free-standing
time-space location system. Einstein built it into the very nature of
light, so that light is now both empirical and epistemological. Its nature
is distorted by the epistemological (non-empirical) requirement that it must
serve in signaling. The location system is read back into empirical events
as prior and superior to them.
So Koichiro, I am arguing, don't do that to your cracks. Don't reduce the
empirical interaction to a time and space localization and a signaling
system internal to them.
Instead, something very much bigger results from what you are really saying
-- that the signaling FAILS to establish a space-time system that works
empirically!
Quantum mechanics needs not to be constrained within relativity -- which
requires all those weird twists in the equations with added particles that
don't exist, and so on.
We need an alternative model, but it cannot be of a FREE-STANDING TIME.
Time needs to be part of a model of eventing. Steve, would you agree that
it's the eventing which brings itself forward, thereby generating time?
I am arguing that eventing is empirically prior to time and space location
systems, which are our own reference systems. Momentum is not within the
before-and-after location system. If we want time and space location, we
have to DERIVE IT FROM THE EMPIRICAL INTERACTIONS. Then they are found to
generate it, but they generate it both forward and behind themselves.
This retroactive effect is of course already implied when Matsuno says that
the outcome can be located within the regular laws of motion, but how it is
arrived at is open until it happens. Retroactively it can be traced.
In"The Responsive Order" I wrote about two kinds of objectivity. If we
hold our reference system constant, we (often) get certain regular
responses. But empirical interactions are distinguishable by many marks.
--------------------------------------------------
I think there is a spot in my model, chapter IV which you read, Koichiro,
where I say "everything x everything" (all conditions affecting each other)
does not take time, OTHER THAN THE TIME IT MAKES." Later, in chapter VIII I
find that at the psycho-physiological level it DOES take time. You make me
think I'm wrong in chapter IV; it takes time already there -- AND THIS IS
THE TIME IT MAKES! So it breaks out of the old system. Wouldn't you agree
that "world time" is actually made by the internal time? I think you might
be providing a crucial link that was missing. I have to think more, and ask
you my question, but at the moment it seems so.
-------------------------------------------------------
Questions:
Now I have to confess a great gap in my understanding. Koichiro, I didn't
grasp how you showed that THESE STUDIES in your book concern the
transmission of conditions of conservation? Doesn't what you say apply to
all systems? Or I missed how you distinguished these studies from, for example:
a) heating one end of a system, where it would be expected to take time for
the heat to spread to the other end of the system, or
b) pushing one end of a stick (or a tube of tightly packed marbles), so
that the other end (or a marble on the other end) moves "SIMULTANEOUSLY."
Are you saying that b) takes empirically measurable time? Or not these or
some other special systems, but all systems "communicate" conservation and
take time doing so, but this has been denied?
Forgive my ignorance please. It's the empirical aspect I 'm trying to
pinpoint.
Gene Gendlin
Mary Hendricks Ph.D.
Focusing Institute
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From: koichiro matsuno/7129 <kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net <apm-discuss@rivertown.net>
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: Re: [APM-DISCUS]: Response to Rosen and Matsuno
Time: 5 April 1998 11:57
On Gene Gendlin's Empirical Interaction; from Koichiro Matsuno
I am just in a crack between two trips. Although I intend to
draft a more lengthy one, let me make brief headlines, first.
Time and space must be generated from empirical interactions
alone.
Empirical interaction "in progress" is materialistic. I
previously referred to the material underpinning of such an
interaction as a signal. An example of signaling materials is
dopamine or acetylcholine in neurons as a neurotransmitter.
Despite that, signal might be a misnomer to uphold the idea of
empirical interaction. Steve Rosen has also reminded me of
this caution. I will be going to think about this in the plane
I shall take tomorrow morning.
Conservation is due to eventing, more than anything else.
Eventing consists of empirical interactions among material
units of whatever sort. If there is only one unit, such as a
hard stick, and nothing else, neither eventing and nor
conservation as a process could be expected. In the case of a
hard stick, an eventing could arise through empirical
interactions, say, between the stick and somebody who whirls
it. Gene has given me a homework of how to predicate empirical
interactions in material terms.
Koichiro Matsuno
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From: Steve Rosen <ROSEN-S@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net <apm-discuss@rivertown.net>
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: Response to Gendlin and Matsuno
Time: 6 April 1998 4:22
Steve Rosen's response to Gendlin and Matsuno:
In responding to Matsuno, Gendlin wrote:
> I have argued that time and space ARE GENERATED BY EVENTING, and are
> ABSTRACT RESULTS OF EVENTING, NOT FREE-STANDING FRAMES within which
> all eventing must fit .... We need an alternative model, but it
> cannot be of a FREE-STANDING TIME. Time needs to be part of a model
> of eventing. Steve, would you agree that it's the eventing which
> brings itself forward, thereby generating time?
Yes, I agree. Through concretely self-referential transformations of
topology (e.g., "Klein-bottling"), I too have sought to intimate the
life-process from which time and space are self-generating.
In reply to Gendlin, Matsuno wrote:
> Empirical interaction "in progress" is materialistic. I
> previously referred to the material underpinning of such an
> interaction as a signal. An example of signaling materials is
> dopamine or acetylcholine in neurons as a neurotransmitter.
> Despite that, signal might be a misnomer to uphold the idea of
> empirical interaction. Steve Rosen has also reminded me of
> this caution. I will be going to think about this in the plane
> I shall take tomorrow morning.
>
> Conservation is due to eventing, more than anything else.
> Eventing consists of empirical interactions among material
> units of whatever sort. If there is only one unit, such as a
> hard stick, and nothing else, neither eventing and nor
> conservation as a process could be expected. In the case of a
> hard stick, an eventing could arise through empirical
> interactions, say, between the stick and somebody who whirls
> it. Gene has given me a homework of how to predicate empirical
> interactions in material terms.
To understand empirical interactions as eventing seems to require
that the terms involved in the interaction be grasped as relating
INTERNALLY. This would appear to mean that we'd need to resist the
inclination to picture the stick and the one who twirls it as ALREADY
LOCATED IN SPACE. If such a picture underlies the analysis of
empricial interaction, then the interacting terms, being cast into the
Newtonian framework, could be related to one another only in an
EXTERNAL, essentially mechanistic fashion. Here, the fixed space-time
framework takes precedence, and the eventing drops out. In Gendlin's
language, the eventing of terms in interaction (interacting bodies,
concepts, etc.) entails "PRE-SEPARATED" ("pre-spatiotemporal")
self-generating activity. Separation is self-generated by activity
that itself cannot be captured in separative terms alone. I would
like to ask Koichiro if this is an implication of his PROTOBIOLOGY.
Steve Rosen
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From: koichiro matsuno/7129 <kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net <apm-discuss@rivertown.net>
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: Resonse to Gendlin and Rosen
Time: 7 April 1998 4:51
Response to Gene Gendlin and Steve Rosen; from Koichiro Matsuno
In response to Gendlin's remark on eventings, Rosen wrote
>To understand empirical interactions as eventing seems to require
>that the terms involved in the interaction be grasped as relating
>INTERNALLY.
This resonance has renewed my perception on the relationship
between interactions and eventings. Let me put it this way.
One scenario is this:
1) global requirement: no net action to and from our empirical
world
2) local requirement: communication of actions
3) theoretical commitment: simultaneous coexistence of all actions.
The theoretical commitment 3) makes Newtonian-Kantian scheme alive.
In particular, the commitment 3) combined with the global requirement
1) gives Newton's third law of action and reaction. Likewise, the
commitment 3) with the local requirement 2) gives us Eintein's
relativity. In other words, a signaling in the form of
"communication of actions" is strictly "global" in contrast to
the local nature latent in the requirement 2). Although both
Gene and Steve seem to be uneasy with this conflict between
the global and the local with regard to signals and signalings,
this has been the way that physics has been practiced.
One more scenario is:
1) global requirement: the same
2) local requirement: the same
3) empirical commitment: inter-actions as an on-going negotiation
of all actions in progress.
This is for interactions as eventing. The empirical commitment
3) makes the local requirement 2) for "communication of actions"
be persistently local. Even if we call it a signaling, it seems
to me that there would not arise the trouble which disturbs signals
in the scheme of the old scenario. Signaling and signal in the old
scenario must be a misnomer. On the other hand, they could survive
in the new scenario since they can become an attribute of inter-actions
as eventings. More, later.
Koichiro Matsuno
(P.S. Since I am approaching my machine in Nagaoka from Freiburg,
I shall re-examine this posting after I return to Japan in a week.)
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From: koichiro matsuno/7129 <kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net <apm-discuss@rivertown.net>
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: Response to Gendlin and Rosen
Time: 12 April 1998 5:22
Response to Gene Gendlin and Steve Rosen #2; from Koichiro Matsuno
Gendlin wrote in his previous response:
>Signaling consists inherently of external relations. ... Don't
>reduce the empirical interaction to a time and space localization
>and a signaling system internal to them.
>Time needs to be part of a model of eventing.
>Wouldn't you agree that "world time" is actually made by the
>internal time?
among others. Responding to these has required further reflection
on my side. To begin with, a few remarks are in order.
Time is relational to clocks, each of which consists of a
relative movement of the participating material bodies. This
relational characteristic of time presumes a process of
synchronization proceeding within the whole array of clocks
in the sense that the time read out of one clock is related to
the similar one read out of another in some way, otherwise no
time to be available to the whole. In other words, each small
clock is responsible for generating time to be referred to and
to be negotiated in a much wider context. The "world time" comes
to be generated by the time internal to each clock, though
how the synchronization or the negotiation would proceed is
entirely an empirical matter.
Likewise, space is also relational in facilitating a
synchronized relative displacement of any material bodies.
Every clock exhibits to a third party a synchronized
displacement of the relative movement of those material bodies
constituting the clock. Space is already latent in each clock
in exhibiting the extent to which it locally displays the
synchronized relative displacement of their moving components.
Space to the global extent comes to be generated through
expanding the extent of the synchronization among the clocks,
though, of course, how the synchronization for the genesis of
space in a wider context would proceed is entirely an empirical
matter. Both space and time, or spacetime in short, turns out
to be a construct out of the whole array of small clocks,
whereas the spacetime conceived as a prerequisite to the
"coexistence" of clocks could be a mere theoretical artifact.
Now, a question arises with regard to where could the
internal observers inhabit and what are they doing. This
question is also related to the point Steve raised:
>In Gendlin's
>language, the eventing of terms in interaction (interacting bodies,
>concepts, etc.) entails "PRE-SEPARATED" ("pre-spatiotemporal")
>self-generating activity. Separation is self-generated by activity
>that itself cannot be captured in separative terms alone. I would
>like to ask Koichiro if this is an implication of his PROTOBIOLOGY.
The minimal internal observer could be part of a small clock,
and it is constantly involved in ticking the local, internal
time there and in synchronizing itself with the similar tickings
in the neighborhood. The synchronization activity of any one
clock toward the others is an action exterted upon the latter.
Inter-actions of clocks are mediated by the internal observers
concerning themselves with generating space and time from the
bottom up manner. The signaling I mentioned as referring to the
communication of actions on the part of every local clock is
quite context-dependent. It has already been committing itself
to a likely construction of spacetime toward the global extent,
although the actual fate always remains to be seen. The
signaling does not guarantee the achievement of the global
spacetime. It simply provides an opportunity for the likely
global achievement. Signaling as the communication of an action
is prior to inter-actions, the latter of which could be the real
heartland of any empirical commitments.
To make a long story short, signaling as a harbinger of
inter-actions is internal to those inter-actions to eventually
come up with. A rationale that inter-actions could hopefully
participate in precipitating a global spacetime is sought in
the global requirement insisting that there should be no net
action to and from our entire empirical world. But, we still
don't know what such a global spacetime would look like. Signals
latent in inter-actions are not those signals we have experienced
in the practice of physical sciences. Perhaps, they may point to
an untrodden new avenue if they are not a misnomer. By the way,
how many of them in the above could survive?
Koichiro Matsuno
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From: Steven M. Rosen <srosen@cuny.campus.mci.net>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net <apm-discuss@rivertown.net>
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: response to Matsuno
Time: 15 April 1998 8:14
Steve Rosen's response to Koichiro Matsuno:
I am happy to see that, step by step, we are becoming more specific, moving
into the nitty-gritty, in our dialogue on time and process. To go further,
I think we need to bring into sharper focus the meaning of such terms as
"empirical," "interaction," "wider context," "local and global," "space,"
"time," etc. The goal would be to avoid both false negatives (where we
seem to disagree but actually do not) and false positives (where we appear
to agree, but do not).
For now, I will only respond to Koichiro's comment that:
> Every clock exhibits to a third party a synchronized
> displacement of the relative movement of those material bodies
> constituting the clock. Space is already latent in each clock
> in exhibiting the extent to which it locally displays the
> synchronized relative displacement of their moving components.
What is the nature of the space involved in the relative movements of the
parts of the single clock? It seems that, unless otherwise specified, the
default assumption about space will operate: the relative movements of the
components of the clock will be seen to take place in the Newtonian/Kantian
continuum. Such movements would then be *mechanical*, and time conceived
in these terms would be *spatialized* time, not process time or eventing.
In this regard, note that the Newtonian continuum essentially consists of
juxtaposed points, points that are densely packed so as to preclude the
existence of any gaps. There is nothing formative or processual about
these points or their interrelationships. They are finished products
involving none of the flux of generative process. Therefore, any movement
that is restricted to the continuum must involve the transition from one
completed destination point to another. What is skipped over here is the
phenomenological "between" or "-ing," the "interstitial being-on-the-way"
of eventing (or "Klein-bottling"). It is true that, in Newtonian space, we
can speak of an intermediary point between two other points, but, given the
nature of the continuum, this "intermediary" element must itself be a
finished destination, not a being-on-the-way. Then, if "local time" is to
be genuinely processual, would we not need a time that is not determined by
relative movements in the Newtonian continuum?
Steve
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From: kmatsuno <kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net <apm-discuss@rivertown.net>
Subject: Re: [APM-DISCUSS]: response to Matsuno
Time: 16 April 1998 23:09
On Steve Rosen's remark on Space; from Koichiro Matsuno
Steve wrote
>The goal would be to avoid both false negatives (where we
>seem to disagree but actually do not) and false positives (where we appear
>to agree, but do not).
Agreed.
>What is the nature of the space involved in the relative movements of the
>parts of the single clock? It seems that, unless otherwise specified, the
>default assumption about space will operate: the relative movements of the
>components of the clock will be seen to take place in the Newtonian/Kantian
>continuum. Such movements would then be *mechanical*, and time conceived
>in these terms would be *spatialized* time, not process time or eventing.
This remark by Steve has urged me to phrase what I would like to say
in a more crispy manner. In a nutshell, both space and time are derivatives
from the interplay between clocks and the internal observers who read them.
Suppose there are three material bodies A, B and C inter-acting with
each other. The relative movement between A and B can serve as a clock
toward the internal observer C, the latter of which can identify the
relative
displacement between A nad B in relation to itself without employing the
Newtonian-Kantian notion of space. (Consider, for instance, the defunct
relativistic dynamics of Descartes) Also, the relative movement between
B and C is a clock toward the internal observer A, and so on. In Gendlin's
language, this may be said as "implying implies implying the implying".
(A funny English? Gene, please correct me if I am wrong.). The time read
out of the "clock A-B" by C is a synchronized relative displacement
between A and B to be measured by C. What is unique to the agent C is
the capacity of acting for the synchronization and for identifying the
relative displacement. Time and space are derivatives from the act of
both the synchronization and the identification of relative displacement.
Even if the number of interacting material bodies becomes far greater
than three as in the case of A, B, C, ..., Z, spacetime for any one of the
internal observers out of A, B, C, ..., Z should be the construct from the
act of internal measurement. I believe I have already said similar things
a few times more under a bit disguised form up until now.
What is crucial at this point is from where I perceive the act of
internal
measurement for both the synchronization and the identification of relative
displacement. The place I am sitting on in a relative sense is on the
shoulder
of one of the internal observers A, B, C, ..., Z. That means I am also part
of
the clocks. This is the so-called internalist perspective (i.e., the worm's
eye).
Of course, I can stand as keeping a distance away from the whole array of
the clocks consisting of A, B, C, ..., Z while imposing the notion of space
and
time on the latter. The present externalist perspective (i.e., the bird's
eye)
would now let me read each of the whole array of clocks in a completely
synchronous manner with all of the others, otherwise neither space nor
time.
A decisive point on discussing the issue of spacetime is where to put
ourselves. Perhaps, there should be no places other than those making
ourselves part of the clocks. This practice is however quite different from
the social convention championed by physics to which we have been
accustomed. If we accept that all of the clocks are synchronous everywhere
and that we are not part of the clocks in any sense of the words, this
would be tantamount to accepting both space and time prior to scrutinizing
what each clock would look like. Insofar as we make ourselves competent
enough to act for synchronizing the relative movement of the material
bodies participating in forming clocks and also to assimilate ourselves
with part of such clocks, the externalist perspective that may impose space
and time freely would be no more tenable. The remaining option must be
the internalist's.
Koichiro Matsuno
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From: Steve Rosen <ROSEN-S@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net <apm-discuss@rivertown.net>
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: Response to Matsuno
Time: 20 April 1998 0:21
Steve Rosen's response to Koichiro Matsuno
In his last message Koichiro wrote:
> Suppose there are three material bodies A, B and C inter-acting with
> each other. The relative movement between A and B can serve as a clock
> toward the internal observer C, the latter of which can identify the
> relative
> displacement between A and B in relation to itself without employing the
> Newtonian-Kantian notion of space.
Does this mean that, contrary to what happens in conventional scientific
observation, the "internal observer C" would in some way be observing
*itself*, making concrete self-reference? If so, can you say more
about how you see this?
In the interest of sharpening our focus on such an APM mode of observation,
let me contrast it with the classico-modern(ist) approach. In the
latter, C, in its capacity as observer of the A-B system, would be
positioned *outside* that system. While functioning in this capacity, C
would never make concrete reference to itself even though, on some
*other* occasion, the roles might be reversed and C would be the
object of an external observation made by A or B. The relative motion
between A and B, as observed externally by C, would *presuppose*
classico-modern(ist) space and time, since this would be a continuous
motion between externally related points or positions; it would be
motion in the spatial continuum, an "objective" motion taking place
in relation to the "bird's eye view" of a fixed subject that is
detached from the continuum.
Would you agree, Koichiro, that the concrete self-reference occurring in
APM observation could not depend on a perspectival relativism in
which C is the observer on one occasion and the observed on another?
It is true here that, in an abstract, relativistic sense, we would be
able to say that C is "both subject and object." But in terms of
what would transpire in the reality of any *given* occasion, no
concrete self-reference would take place; observation would be strictly
external and Kantian-Newtonian space-time would prevail.
Am I suggesting that APM observation requires that C be both observer and
observed on the *same* occasion? Well, not exactly. What would
actually be required, I believe, is a dialectic in which the
relationship between observer and observed would neither be
externally mediated nor simply immediate but *internally* mediated,
as it were. That is to say, in observing myself, I would of course
not be observing what simply is other, but neither would I be viewing
myself *as opposed to* viewing another. Instead the observation
would involve a kind of unbroken "internal circulation" between self
and other in which observation of the other would "flow right back
into" the self.
Sorry if I've gotten all paradoxical again, but I don't think it can be
helped when it comes to these difficult matters. I'm hoping Koichiro
or someone else out there might like pick up on this and play off it,
as part of a "reflective jam session" -- assuming my lead has been
coherent enough for that. In the meanwhile, I'll take the liberty of
falling back once more on my background paper where I attempt to work
all this out via APM interpretations of topological structures such
as the Moebius surface and Klein bottle. In fact, I believe that
what we have called "Klein bottling" in this forum involves just the
sort of inner dialectic of self and other (observer and observed,
subject and object) I've been trying to articulate today.
Steve Rosen
>
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From: kmatsuno <kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net <apm-discuss@rivertown.net>
Subject: RE: [APM-DISCUSS]: Response to Matsuno
Time: 21 April 1998 22:36
On Steve Rosen's Concrete Self-Reference; from Koichiro Matsuno
Steve wrote:
> In his last message Koichiro wrote:
>> Suppose there are three material bodies A, B and C inter-acting with
>> each other. The relative movement between A and B can serve as a clock
>> toward the internal observer C, the latter of which can identify the
>> relative
>> displacement between A and B in relation to itself without employing the
>> Newtonian-Kantian notion of space.
>Does this mean that, contrary to what happens in conventional scientific
>observation, the "internal observer C" would in some way be observing
>*itself*, making concrete self-reference?
Definitely, yes.
> If so, can you say more about how you see this?
(See, below)
>In the interest of sharpening our focus on such an APM mode of observation,
>let me contrast it with the classico-modern(ist) approach. In the
>latter, C, in its capacity as observer of the A-B system, would be
>positioned *outside* that system. While functioning in this capacity, C
>would never make concrete reference to itself even though, on some
>*other* occasion, the roles might be reversed and C would be the
>object of an external observation made by A or B. The relative motion
>between A and B, as observed externally by C, would *presuppose*
>classico-modern(ist) space and time, since this would be a continuous
>motion between externally related points or positions; it would be
>motion in the spatial continuum, an "objective" motion taking place
>in relation to the "bird's eye view" of a fixed subject that is
>detached from the continuum.
This is exactly the point that the traditional modernists have tried to
convey in earnest. Steve's effort for clearing what the modernists' claim is
all about should be commended. The clock picture I have referred to is a bit
different from the one the modernists have claimed. Among the three bodies
of A, B and C, A can act upon B, and A is going to be acted upon not only by
B, but also by C. The action and the reaction are not concurrent, but rather
sequential, contrary to the traditional view that the modernists take both
the action and the reaction concurrent and simultaneous. There is no global
synchronizer over the three. We have no reason to see both the action and
the reaction remain concurrent unless an ad hoc stipulation of the global
synchronization is imposed. When B acts upon A, it also acts upon C because
of the intrinsic interconnectedness of A, B and C. A's action towards B can
be going to be reflected upon A through C. Since C's reflection upon A is a
new action toward A, a similar sequence of action-reaction undoubtedly
follows ad infinitum. C's reading of the "clock A-B", that is due to the
action toward C, subsequently causes some inevitable changes in the "clock
C-A", and B's reading of the "clock C-A" does the similar to the "clock
B-C", and so on.
The self-reference of A towards itself is by no means concurrent nor
simultaneous, but through the process of carrying some activities forward.
What is being carried forward is some sort of ongoingness. At the least,
those internal inconsistencies that can not be frozen into the consistent
record would constantly have to be carried forward. That is dialectic in
essence.
>Would you agree, Koichiro, that the concrete self-reference occurring in
>APM observation could not depend on a perspectival relativism in
>which C is the observer on one occasion and the observed on another?
Surely. A's act of reading the "clock B-C" is intrinsically inseparable
from A's act of moving the "clock C-A", and the rest of the story is the
same.
> In the meanwhile, I'll take the liberty of
>falling back once more on my background paper where I attempt to work
>all this out via APM interpretations of topological structures such
>as the Moebius surface and Klein bottle. In fact, I believe that
>what we have called "Klein bottling" in this forum involves just the
>sort of inner dialectic of self and other (observer and observed,
>subject and object) I've been trying to articulate today.
Steve's point seems to call our attention to that even if we consider
only topologies, though sophisticated in their own light, we can experience
the dialectics of self and others. My point is that we can see the similar
dialectics working even in much rudimentary strata of materials carrying
nothing exquisite in their topologies.
Koichiro Matsuno
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From: Mary Hendricks-Gendlin <mgendlin@rivertown.net>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net <apm-discuss@rivertown.net>
Subject: [APM-DISCUSS]: Reply to Rosen and Matsuno
Time: 26 April 1998 23:56
TO MATSUNO, ROSEN, & ALL INTERESTED from Gene Gendlin
Now that Steve has clarified our discussion and we have agreed to reject a
"perspectival relativism" WITHIN the empirical interactions, I want to make
three points and ask one question.
1) I sympathize with Matsuno's lovely way of reading the old terms
"observers" and "signaling" (the terms of perspectival relativism) in,
locally, internally to the interactions. Using these in his new way,
INITIALLY, cracks the old model.
Let's take the old people with us -- one step at a time.
But, once cracked, don't we agree that what actually goes on WITHIN THE
INTERACTIONS is not really an observing and signaling?
I mean interactions that are not those that involve concrete effects of
clock-reading. The latter would be considered, but second.
Don't we agree that at least some interactions are independent of, and
prior to the determination of space-time LOCATION relative to someone?
2) It's OK to call Matsuno's time "local" INITIALLY; to crack the old model.
But once that's done, continuing to speak of Matsuno time as "local" lets
the old model keep the world. Why give them the world?
It is already known that one cannot always demand location in time --
momentum and other things cannot be measured if space-time location is
demanded. So it is not altogether radical to insist that we cannot always
put location in space-time FIRST.
Quantum is chafing at the bit to get free from the limiting conditions of
relativity so it can use some of its own much greater number of solutions.
Isn't Matsuno time empirical time? So, isn't it prior and more inclusive
than perspectival time? Perspectival time is simpler, simplistic, cannot
even handle three bodies, as you show, Koichiro, so how can it be the
overarching time, with your Matsuno time only "local?" (The argument can
BEGIN by calling it "local," but as the argument progresses, Matsuno time
has to become time. The old time is localization-time.)
In the model I am trying to establish the old simplistic time is
derivative, and can be derived from eventing-time.
3) In my model the connections between the UNSEPARATED moments are not
observer-dependent, rather each GOES BOTH BEHIND EACH MOMENT AND IMPLIES
FORWARD, SO THAT EMPIRICAL EVENTING IS SELF-CARRYING FORWARD.
Independently, you Steve have arrived at the same pattern: Kleinbottling
means the "point" goes to both places.
I think we need this or another model, but some model, to replace the old
one at the ground level, to re-conceptualize the basic eventing, not in
terms of already determinate particles, not in terms of already-defined
external time-space-locations, and not in terms of atomic separates of any
kind. If the basic terms don't change, not much else will.
In a model in which observers are not basic, events are not just
things-over-there, which omit us humans from the start. Protobiology is
about a SELF-ORGANIZING, SELF-DETERMINING process that doesn't need
observers because it is not at passive points that are connected as a
construction of observers. This promises to make possible an eventual
model that can WIDEN science to include us (while keeping all we have).
But we need to establish a new model (even several) to show that this can
go somewhere. For example, a physics that can generate biology goes somewhere.
I'm very much against styling this as some irreconcilable twist that leaves
the old model as is, but in trouble -- as postmodernism seems to do. If we
are only annoying scientists with unsolvable puzzles, if we only show that
others are not so smart, but give them nothing they can use, they are right
to say: "If you have nothing better, get out of my way and let me work."
So I think THIS modesty backfires.
My philosophy has led to a new model for the basic terms of empirical
eventing -- new from the primitive terms on! I'd rather be modest in other
ways: it's tentative; many versions are possible; I'm doing it in
collaboration with other philosophers and scientists; it's only one more
step along the way quantum mechanics is already moving -- in these ways I
think it's good to be modest.
4) QUESTION: In my Process Model chapter IVB, (p. 107) where I have
"eveving doesn't take any more time than the time of occurring." (I meant
that what you call "conservartion", the crossing of all conditions TAKES NO
MORE TIME THAN THE TIME IT MAKES. Am I wrong there? I can't finish
thinking it through via Matsuno time, because I can think of it in two ways:
EITHER time is just what ev x ev generates. Then I'm right.
OR Matsuno has shown me that where I said it takes "no more time than .."
this is just where he finds empirical time. Did I lose hold of the internal
time there, as if that doesn't take time?
In Kleinbottling terms: When the point goes both ways, if we say that
doesn't take any more time than the old linear model did, are we falling
back into it, or are we saying that going-back-behind-itself IS time?
Koichiro, would you say that precisely this internal bringing-itself-forward
DOES take time not found in the linear way?
Or can we say that this is time, all empirical time. And "linear" or
birdseye time is a derivative that can be used in some cases (e.g., not in
measuring momentum).
Either way: ISN'T INTERNAL TIME TIME? ISN'T THE OLD BIRDS EYE TIME MERELY
A RETROACTIVE SIMPLIFICATION, USEFUL ONLY WHERE LOCALIZATION IS OBTAINABLE?
Gene Gendlin
Mary Hendricks Ph.D.
Focusing Institute
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From: Steve Rosen <ROSEN-S@POSTBOX.CSI.CUNY.EDU>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net <apm-discuss@rivertown.net>
Subject : [APM-DISCUSS]: Reply to Gendlin
Time: 28 April1998 7:58
Steve Rosen's reply to Gene Gendlin's question:
> QUESTION: In my Process Model chapter IVB, (p. 107) where I have
> "eveving doesn't take any more time than the time of occurring." (I meant
> that what you call "conservartion", the crossing of all conditions TAKES NO
> MORE TIME THAN THE TIME IT MAKES. Am I wrong there? I can't finish
> thinking it through via Matsuno time, because I can think of it in two ways:
>
> EITHER time is just what ev x ev generates. Then I'm right.
> OR Matsuno has shown me that where I said it takes "no more time than .."
>
> this is just where he finds empirical time. Did I lose hold of the internal
> time there, as if that doesn't take time?
>
> In Kleinbottling terms: When the point goes both ways, if we say that
> doesn't take any more time than the old linear model did, are we falling
> back into it, or are we saying that going-back-behind-itself IS time?
> Koichiro, would you say that precisely this internal bringing-itself-forward
> DOES take time not found in the linear way?
> Or can we say that this is time, all empirical time. And "linear" or
> birdseye time is a derivative that can be used in some cases (e.g., not in
> measuring momentum).
>
> Either way: ISN'T INTERNAL TIME TIME? ISN'T THE OLD BIRDS EYE TIME MERE
> LY
> A RETROACTIVE SIMPLIFICATION, USEFUL ONLY WHERE LOCALIZATION IS OBTAINABLE?
How about thinking of it this way:
The old time is indeed *linear*: we think of it in terms of a
"time line" marked off by a series of extensionless points arranged in
strict sequence. It is in this "bird's eye" view that time can be
CATEGORIALLY SEPARATED from space. The former entails pure
sequentiality whereas the latter is strictly limited to simultaneity.
In the old view, time and space, sequentiality and simultaneity,
never "cross," never interpenetrate one another (not even in
Einstein's "integration" of time and space). But process time or
eventing has "thickness" (people like Bergson, Heidegger and Merleau-
Ponty -- each in quite distinctive ways -- have said as much). To me
this means that, in eventing/kleinbottling, a *dialectic* of time and
space, sequentiality and simultaneity, is enacted. Bearing this in
mind, when we say that "eventing takes time," if, by "time," we mean
sequentiality alone, i.e. time AS OPPOSED TO space, then it seems
we *would* be falling back into the old time.
In past meetings, Gene and I have puzzled over the relation between
his "eventing" and my "kleinbottling," since it did seem that while
we had developed fairly similar ideas, his was more "temporal" and
mine more "spatial." The way it looks to me now, both notions are
BOTH SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL, in the sense of enacting a dialectic
between the simultaneous and the successive wherein they are
internally blended -- *without* their distinctiveness just dissolving
into an undifferentiated totality. In the blending, neither space
nor time are recognizable in their old and familiar, categorically
dichotomized forms. The dialectic is such that space and time
themselves "chiasmatically cross."
Steve Rosen
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From: kmatsuno <kmatsuno@vos.nagaokaut.ac.jp>
To: apm-discuss@rivertown.net <apm-discuss@rivertown.net>
Subject: RE: [APM-DISCUSS]: Reply to Rosen and Matsuno
Time: 29 April 1998 11:55
On Gene Gendlin's Eventing-Time; from Koichiro Matsuno
Gene's question has given me a new impetus to think about our sticky
problem all over again. He wrote:
> In my Process Model chapter IVB, (p. 107) where I have
>"eveving doesn't take any more time than the time of occurring." (I meant
>that what you call "conservartion", the crossing of all conditions TAKES NO
>MORE TIME THAN THE TIME IT MAKES. Am I wrong there? I can't finish
>thinking it through via Matsuno time, because I can think of it in two
ways:
> EITHER time is just what ev x ev generates. Then I'm right.
> OR Matsuno has shown me that where I said it takes "no more time than .."
>this is just where he finds empirical time. Did I lose hold of the
internal
>time there, as if that doesn't take time?
For the time being, let me classify our attitudes addressing the issue of
time in relation to the grammatical tense we have to employ in any case.
There seems to be at least three choices:
(1) time internal to the present progressive tense,
(2) time inherent to the present tense,
(3) time read into the present perfect tense.
Time (1) is agential, dialectic, eventing and Kleinbottling. Time (2) is the
old and the modernist's time, and time (3) is for reading and deciphering
the record out there. To be sure, there are many nice aspects with time
internal to the present progressive tense. So far, so good. However, a new
twist would arise once we ask the question of how can we describe time
internal to the present progressive tense in statements in the present
tense.
At first sight, it seems to be impossible to reduce the present
progressive to the present tense. But, there are at least two loopholes. One
is to make a tautological statement in the present tense in terms of an
equivalent noun or adjective (e.g., "time internal to the present progresive
tense is agential"). Another is to employ a negative statement in the
present tense which, if skillfully framed, can effectively imply a positive
statement in the present progressive tense. Or, a mixture of the two. Gene's
"TAKES NO MORE TIME THAN THE TIME IT MAKES" happens to be this case. This
understanding is different from the interpretation phrased in a positive
statement in the present mode as "time is just what ev x ev generates",
since the latter interpretation has already presumed what the product "x"
would imply even before actual eventing. If the product is accepted, some
topological structure of time specified in the present mode would have to
already be there.
Nonetheless, every eventing is unique. This is the reason why I have
sticked to empirical time, that is time internal to the present progressive
tense, phrased in a negative statement in the present tense. No clock takes
more time than the time it makes through reading and moving the others. That
is to say, the time each local clock takes is not time inherent to the
present tense. My local time has always been meant time internal to the
present progressive tense. Of course, it would be desirable to phrase time
internal to the present progressive tense in a positive statement. What I
have done in my Protobiology is, I believe, to relate it to a positive
statement framed in the present perfect tense.
Koichiro Matsuno
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