Wittgenstein once implied that the meaning of a word lies in its usage. Plato once implied that the meaning of a word lies in the object it represented. Benjamin Lee Whorf once implied that language, thought and reality were three interconnected things. How can one reconcile these disparate arguments?
If the meaning of a word lies in its usage, it is non-referent, language as language. If the meaning of a word lies in an idea, it is thought referent, language as thought. If the meaning of a word lies in an object, it is reality referent, language as reality. The constraint upon both of the possible mental universes of idea and object is the usage of words. Language is a constant and a variable that both limits and adjusts to the relation of object to idea, symbol to canon, sign to significance. Like all currencies in all markets it exists per se, as word, and also in relation to the products, as object and idea, it values and orders.
What is the nature of non-referent language? It is the trial and error attempt to adjust the usage of words to object and idea and to other words as well. At this point, the secret of language may be somewhere in the mirror neuron circuitry and it may be this circuitry that is modified in non-referent linguistic operations.
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Sunday, September 21, 2014
Pirate Dispatches and Disordered Minds
A pirate dispatch is simply non-ordained behavior into a narrative vacuum, doing something because it is contextually important that it be done but nobody qualified or credentialed is doing it. The classic example of a pirate dispatch is John Nash, the mathematician, going after what we now know as String Theory because no one else was doing it even though he was not a physicist. The process apparently disordered an already disordered mind into institutional insanity, the classic pattern of a pirate dispatch which is by its very nature insane. Just seeing the opportunity for a pirate dispatch is an exercise in alienation as psychiatrists use the term.
Writing a novel is a type of pirate dispatch. Writers rarely have subject matter expert credentials in their content although a few exceptions come to mind. Neither Steinbeck nor Fitzgerald was formally qualified to speak of mental illness yet both did, 'Of Mice and Men' and 'Tender is the Night', and both to good effect. Writers traditionally cultivate disordered minds by drink and drugs to clear debris from their neural circuits and allow clarity of artistic vision. This is not a flirtation with dementia as writers characterize it; it is a recipe for it.
We are in an epochal period of Western Civilization in which the intellectual landscape is littered with failed narratives and opportunities for pirate dispatches abound. This window of opportunity, and it is a window, the scientific surround of new narratives is largely in place, is the author of our present intellectual anarchy and such painful process will continue until the cultural equivalent of Kuhn's scientific revolution is created, made common currency, and subsequently ordains legitimate, credentialed dispatches.
Such process, for all its cost, cannot be hurried. It must be allowed to happen, fostered but not rushed. This is a difficult task when pirate dispatches characterize the intellectual life of a society yet the future of civilization and, indeed, the planet and the solar system depend on it.
(This blog is a pirate dispatch.)
Writing a novel is a type of pirate dispatch. Writers rarely have subject matter expert credentials in their content although a few exceptions come to mind. Neither Steinbeck nor Fitzgerald was formally qualified to speak of mental illness yet both did, 'Of Mice and Men' and 'Tender is the Night', and both to good effect. Writers traditionally cultivate disordered minds by drink and drugs to clear debris from their neural circuits and allow clarity of artistic vision. This is not a flirtation with dementia as writers characterize it; it is a recipe for it.
We are in an epochal period of Western Civilization in which the intellectual landscape is littered with failed narratives and opportunities for pirate dispatches abound. This window of opportunity, and it is a window, the scientific surround of new narratives is largely in place, is the author of our present intellectual anarchy and such painful process will continue until the cultural equivalent of Kuhn's scientific revolution is created, made common currency, and subsequently ordains legitimate, credentialed dispatches.
Such process, for all its cost, cannot be hurried. It must be allowed to happen, fostered but not rushed. This is a difficult task when pirate dispatches characterize the intellectual life of a society yet the future of civilization and, indeed, the planet and the solar system depend on it.
(This blog is a pirate dispatch.)
Monday, April 14, 2014
'Games People Play' An Essay in Three Parts Part 3
Part 3
It has become useful in these times of creative destruction to speak of Grand Narratives or metanarratives when speaking of civilization [Lyotard, 1979]. We study the past to predict the future. The wisdom achieved in the study of history becomes the Grand Narrative of prescriptive myth. That is the process of civilization. It is a quest for Truth and has little to do with science and the evolution of truth which is a contingent petite narrative and nothing to do with technology which is ad hoc and amoral.
One does not cast History as Narrative without both context and intent. These attempts to rationalize a chronology are useful and worthy of study in the process of myth creation. They are not the Truth. Such narratives are approximate and almost certainly in error. That being said, an approximate historical narrative and the mythos implied by it are valuable hypotheses in that quest for Truth. In these times, it is politic to speak of personal myth. However any such myth must be drawn from chronology, history, and narrative to have meaning. There must be a shared vocabulary even if one is dealing in personal contingent truth for it to be social behavior. Here is the vocabulary, chronology, of this piece which composes a narrative that informs it. It is simply my interpretation of events and a prediction of what could be, small 't' true. It is a contention of this narrative that the Grand Narrative of Western Civilization reached its zenith in the year 1776 and was replaced by 1929 by a Grand Design which is no more than a technological set created by the Invisible Hand of the market deploying efficient technology which is the end result of what could be called Utopian Anarchy. The final result of this process is a stable technological set defining a new narrative civilization and making the Grand Design incidental to social existence.
The Chronology
Foundations of the Grand Design-
Empiricism The Scientific Revolution
Hobbes, Rousseau, and the Social Contract The Rational Society
Market Games and Adam Smith Utopian Anarchy
Innate Behavior and Immanuel Kant 'Whereof we cannot know'
Utopian Anarchy-
American Revolution and Constitution The Rational Government
French Revolution Utopian Anarchy in Becoming
Andrew Jackson Chaos Formalized
Grand Design in Becoming-
Steam Locomotive Technological Ecosystem
Transcendentalists Grand Design Reaction
American Civil War Creative Destruction
La Belle Epoque PostIndustrialism
The End of the Grand Narrative-
First World War Grand Narrative Bankrupt
Jazz Age Chaos Culture
Technological Ecosystem in Becoming-
Great Depression and World War II Grand Design at Work
Postwar Era The Economic Bar Raised
Systems Theory and Game Theory
Information Theory The Vacuum Filled
Lyndon Johnson Counter Chaos
Postmodernism A New World Being Born
From IBM 360 to 2060+/- as pure guess.
Civilization is the highest form of social existence. It is a destination of social development and a journey to the Truth. As social existence it is a game of market contracts however vague those contracts are and however volatile the currency that scores them.
The End
It has become useful in these times of creative destruction to speak of Grand Narratives or metanarratives when speaking of civilization [Lyotard, 1979]. We study the past to predict the future. The wisdom achieved in the study of history becomes the Grand Narrative of prescriptive myth. That is the process of civilization. It is a quest for Truth and has little to do with science and the evolution of truth which is a contingent petite narrative and nothing to do with technology which is ad hoc and amoral.
One does not cast History as Narrative without both context and intent. These attempts to rationalize a chronology are useful and worthy of study in the process of myth creation. They are not the Truth. Such narratives are approximate and almost certainly in error. That being said, an approximate historical narrative and the mythos implied by it are valuable hypotheses in that quest for Truth. In these times, it is politic to speak of personal myth. However any such myth must be drawn from chronology, history, and narrative to have meaning. There must be a shared vocabulary even if one is dealing in personal contingent truth for it to be social behavior. Here is the vocabulary, chronology, of this piece which composes a narrative that informs it. It is simply my interpretation of events and a prediction of what could be, small 't' true. It is a contention of this narrative that the Grand Narrative of Western Civilization reached its zenith in the year 1776 and was replaced by 1929 by a Grand Design which is no more than a technological set created by the Invisible Hand of the market deploying efficient technology which is the end result of what could be called Utopian Anarchy. The final result of this process is a stable technological set defining a new narrative civilization and making the Grand Design incidental to social existence.
The Chronology
Foundations of the Grand Design-
Empiricism The Scientific Revolution
Hobbes, Rousseau, and the Social Contract The Rational Society
Market Games and Adam Smith Utopian Anarchy
Innate Behavior and Immanuel Kant 'Whereof we cannot know'
Utopian Anarchy-
American Revolution and Constitution The Rational Government
French Revolution Utopian Anarchy in Becoming
Andrew Jackson Chaos Formalized
Grand Design in Becoming-
Steam Locomotive Technological Ecosystem
Transcendentalists Grand Design Reaction
American Civil War Creative Destruction
La Belle Epoque PostIndustrialism
The End of the Grand Narrative-
First World War Grand Narrative Bankrupt
Jazz Age Chaos Culture
Technological Ecosystem in Becoming-
Great Depression and World War II Grand Design at Work
Postwar Era The Economic Bar Raised
Systems Theory and Game Theory
Information Theory The Vacuum Filled
Lyndon Johnson Counter Chaos
Postmodernism A New World Being Born
From IBM 360 to 2060+/- as pure guess.
Civilization is the highest form of social existence. It is a destination of social development and a journey to the Truth. As social existence it is a game of market contracts however vague those contracts are and however volatile the currency that scores them.
The End
Sunday, April 13, 2014
'Games People Play' An Essay in Three Parts Part 2
Part 2
Civilization is a hard concept to pin down even in this powerful analytical frame. It appears to be the motivating psychological space, the coherent array of object/idea, of a given technology that generates productive behavior related to certain objects which such process produces. It is, then, a relation of object to idea, of symbol to canon, of sign to significance. Civilization is simply meaning and that is what generates nihilism as the narratives of one civilization give way to another, or following, civilization. Dark Ages are time of creative destruction of that motivating psychological space with its narratives. They are consequent to the failure of a psychological space and precondition to the creation of a new one, without darkness we would not know light, and they are solely concerned with material existence and the keeping of lore.
What is material existence? It is simply the total of the habits and paradigms used to feed, clothe, and house a given population, its material culture. It is no more than that. Material existence is incidental to the process of civilization. The two are disparate concepts. That one must first exist in order to be a part of a civilization which is only incidentally concerned with such existence is the paradox and the genius of human social existence.
What, then, of Good and Evil in such a secular analysis? Good is that behavior, including cognitive, ordained by the accepted psychological space and functional at such a level as to aggrandize that psychological space by object and/or idea. The idea of Good is both the evolution of Truth and a due respect for human limitation. A certain amount of managed innovation is Good. A glut of innovation anarchy is Evil. Civilization is a journey, not a destination. One does not rush headlong into the future without consequences. The Twentieth Century is a chronicle of unwise objects, unwise ideas, and false relations. The idea is that we can do better than Western Civilization by its own strictures. The lesson is that we can do worse.
Material existence has its own Good and Evil, being disparate, and these resolve around social utility and efficiency. Good is being, as one expects, economically useful. Good is being economically efficient. Evil, the opposite of these, includes the leisure to think, which is exactly what a successful material culture engenders. It cannot be ignored that civilization and material existence, however they complement each other, are disparate. They do not account for or understand the other. It is this dynamic, this opposing of Goods and Evils, which destroys civilizations and builds new ones, which generates new theory and new technology.
As has been indicated, true incommensurability is difficult to obtain. As disparate as material existence and civilization are, there must be some relational that will tie them together. That relational is game score. Game score is more than money. It is vocabulary, money, paradigms, and databases. It is talent, taste, and physical person. It is not just a score but an index of scores and it describes a hierarchy of levels of existence. This index I call social purchase.
Game score as an index is, at its highest level, the stuff of civilization. This is maximum social purchase. Next are the operational aspects of material existence and the games of material culture. Here are talent and arbitrageur. This is the milieu of money. Thirdly, there are the games of the flesh market where the physical person generates social purchase. Last there is the milieu of marginality, of low utility. There is little or no social purchase here except talent.
Social purchase, which exists as the relative attributes measured in the game scores that compose it, is social existence. The phenomenon exists in no other wise.
Part 3 tomorrow
Civilization is a hard concept to pin down even in this powerful analytical frame. It appears to be the motivating psychological space, the coherent array of object/idea, of a given technology that generates productive behavior related to certain objects which such process produces. It is, then, a relation of object to idea, of symbol to canon, of sign to significance. Civilization is simply meaning and that is what generates nihilism as the narratives of one civilization give way to another, or following, civilization. Dark Ages are time of creative destruction of that motivating psychological space with its narratives. They are consequent to the failure of a psychological space and precondition to the creation of a new one, without darkness we would not know light, and they are solely concerned with material existence and the keeping of lore.
What is material existence? It is simply the total of the habits and paradigms used to feed, clothe, and house a given population, its material culture. It is no more than that. Material existence is incidental to the process of civilization. The two are disparate concepts. That one must first exist in order to be a part of a civilization which is only incidentally concerned with such existence is the paradox and the genius of human social existence.
What, then, of Good and Evil in such a secular analysis? Good is that behavior, including cognitive, ordained by the accepted psychological space and functional at such a level as to aggrandize that psychological space by object and/or idea. The idea of Good is both the evolution of Truth and a due respect for human limitation. A certain amount of managed innovation is Good. A glut of innovation anarchy is Evil. Civilization is a journey, not a destination. One does not rush headlong into the future without consequences. The Twentieth Century is a chronicle of unwise objects, unwise ideas, and false relations. The idea is that we can do better than Western Civilization by its own strictures. The lesson is that we can do worse.
Material existence has its own Good and Evil, being disparate, and these resolve around social utility and efficiency. Good is being, as one expects, economically useful. Good is being economically efficient. Evil, the opposite of these, includes the leisure to think, which is exactly what a successful material culture engenders. It cannot be ignored that civilization and material existence, however they complement each other, are disparate. They do not account for or understand the other. It is this dynamic, this opposing of Goods and Evils, which destroys civilizations and builds new ones, which generates new theory and new technology.
As has been indicated, true incommensurability is difficult to obtain. As disparate as material existence and civilization are, there must be some relational that will tie them together. That relational is game score. Game score is more than money. It is vocabulary, money, paradigms, and databases. It is talent, taste, and physical person. It is not just a score but an index of scores and it describes a hierarchy of levels of existence. This index I call social purchase.
Game score as an index is, at its highest level, the stuff of civilization. This is maximum social purchase. Next are the operational aspects of material existence and the games of material culture. Here are talent and arbitrageur. This is the milieu of money. Thirdly, there are the games of the flesh market where the physical person generates social purchase. Last there is the milieu of marginality, of low utility. There is little or no social purchase here except talent.
Social purchase, which exists as the relative attributes measured in the game scores that compose it, is social existence. The phenomenon exists in no other wise.
Part 3 tomorrow
Saturday, April 12, 2014
"Games People Play' An Essay in Three Parts Part 1
Games People Play
The nature of the human life is an interesting subject for speculation. It is arguably too large a concept for the human brain, for logic and for language, yet it must be considered. It is the conceptual context of all our behavior. The contention of this three part essay, and that is all it can be, a contention, is that human social existence is a game of market contracts.
Given this conceit, it follows that there must exist certain currencies, perception, language, mathematics, and money, which allow the keeping of a common score, 'game' being the commensurable element in otherwise incommensurable activities. The obvious questions are to be asked and answered to a high standard of current thought in this work. What is a game? What is a currency? What is a market? In what sense is a common score the arbiter of social existence? What is the relationship of civilization to social existence?
Part 1
Games are everywhere from chess to video games to sport. They are an inextricable element of human social existence. However, a closer look at 'game' such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosopher, took in the last century reveals an impenetrable mystery. It appears that while everyone knows a game when they see one, a definition is impossible [Wittgenstein, 1953]. That leads one directly to the work Immanuel Kant did in the Nineteenth Century on the subject of the unknowable. According to his thought there are unknowable a priori concepts we are born with, the 'thing-in-itself', which we employ in the analysis of perception to form 'categories of understanding' which are in language [Kant, 1781]. 'Game', being unknowable, appears to be such a 'thing-in-itself' which, interacting with perception, creates 'categories of understanding' such as chess or football. It works perfectly.
Supporting this view are the findings of researchers that chimpanzees exhibit game skills [Jensen, 2007]. 'Game' thereby seems to be wired into the primate brain, however that happened. It therefore has all the characteristics of a thing-in-itself. Exploring current game theory research for estimates of the power of this conceit we find that games, no matter how well designed, will not play without a moral imperative that no player will do unto any other player without their consent [Murray, 2007]. From the nuts and bolts of human behavior to morality, the contention that 'game' structures human behavior is one powerful conceptual argument.
Now it is time to turn to the nature of market games and contracts. A market is a locus of buying and selling. It operates on contracts of performance and consideration, the classic model. It is, however, nothing more than an arbitrage game, arbitrage being the simple process of 'taking' plenty to scarcity. All markets operate on a basis of arbitrage. That is where profits are made and losses suffered and score tallied.
Money, while itself subject to arbitrage, enables the establishment of the relative value of disparate products such as apples and oranges on a basis of plenty and scarcity. Money markets define the operating constraints of all other markets and enable the establishment of a common score. Inherent in this view and fundamental to it is the stricture that only humans are players. Markets do not allocate resources to means of production. That is a clever analytical trick. Markets are games of arbitrage resulting in scores, profit and loss, accruing to individual human beings, players. They only incidentally allocate resources and then, not to means of production, but to talent, human beings, who transform those resources into products themselves capable of arbitrage [Smith, 1776]. It is simple. It is complex. Markets are an expression of human social existence. They can exist in no other wise.
Obviously, an examination of currency is needed. First, one needs the concept that true incommensurability is difficult to obtain [Kuhn, 2002]. Apples and oranges are disparate but they can be compared on a basis of enough/not enough which is a countable proposition and therefore in language and mathematics. Such an analysis results in the capacity for arbitrage and results in the establishment of relative value or a sum certain of money. Being contained in perception, in language, in mathematics and in money deems an object socially real.
So, there area four currencies in operation. What common feature defines the category? They are all 'relationals' having the intrinsic ability to establish relations between elements of a class. If I see you standing to my left, that is a relation. If I say that you are taller than I, that is a relation. If my $5 buys more than your $3, that is a relation. If I prove that 3 is greater than -3, that is a relation. However, if one shares a currency, then the simple relational aspect of it becomes an entanglement as the concept applies in physics. If you are to my left, I am to your right. We are entangled. If my $5 buys more than your $3, your $3 buys less than my $5. We are entangled. If 3 is proved greater than -3 to you and I, than surely -3 is less than 3 to you and I. We are entangled.These relations are shared by convention and elevate the 'relational' to an entanglement. This is the stuff of social existence.
Part 2 tomorrow
The nature of the human life is an interesting subject for speculation. It is arguably too large a concept for the human brain, for logic and for language, yet it must be considered. It is the conceptual context of all our behavior. The contention of this three part essay, and that is all it can be, a contention, is that human social existence is a game of market contracts.
Given this conceit, it follows that there must exist certain currencies, perception, language, mathematics, and money, which allow the keeping of a common score, 'game' being the commensurable element in otherwise incommensurable activities. The obvious questions are to be asked and answered to a high standard of current thought in this work. What is a game? What is a currency? What is a market? In what sense is a common score the arbiter of social existence? What is the relationship of civilization to social existence?
Part 1
Games are everywhere from chess to video games to sport. They are an inextricable element of human social existence. However, a closer look at 'game' such as Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosopher, took in the last century reveals an impenetrable mystery. It appears that while everyone knows a game when they see one, a definition is impossible [Wittgenstein, 1953]. That leads one directly to the work Immanuel Kant did in the Nineteenth Century on the subject of the unknowable. According to his thought there are unknowable a priori concepts we are born with, the 'thing-in-itself', which we employ in the analysis of perception to form 'categories of understanding' which are in language [Kant, 1781]. 'Game', being unknowable, appears to be such a 'thing-in-itself' which, interacting with perception, creates 'categories of understanding' such as chess or football. It works perfectly.
Supporting this view are the findings of researchers that chimpanzees exhibit game skills [Jensen, 2007]. 'Game' thereby seems to be wired into the primate brain, however that happened. It therefore has all the characteristics of a thing-in-itself. Exploring current game theory research for estimates of the power of this conceit we find that games, no matter how well designed, will not play without a moral imperative that no player will do unto any other player without their consent [Murray, 2007]. From the nuts and bolts of human behavior to morality, the contention that 'game' structures human behavior is one powerful conceptual argument.
Now it is time to turn to the nature of market games and contracts. A market is a locus of buying and selling. It operates on contracts of performance and consideration, the classic model. It is, however, nothing more than an arbitrage game, arbitrage being the simple process of 'taking' plenty to scarcity. All markets operate on a basis of arbitrage. That is where profits are made and losses suffered and score tallied.
Money, while itself subject to arbitrage, enables the establishment of the relative value of disparate products such as apples and oranges on a basis of plenty and scarcity. Money markets define the operating constraints of all other markets and enable the establishment of a common score. Inherent in this view and fundamental to it is the stricture that only humans are players. Markets do not allocate resources to means of production. That is a clever analytical trick. Markets are games of arbitrage resulting in scores, profit and loss, accruing to individual human beings, players. They only incidentally allocate resources and then, not to means of production, but to talent, human beings, who transform those resources into products themselves capable of arbitrage [Smith, 1776]. It is simple. It is complex. Markets are an expression of human social existence. They can exist in no other wise.
Obviously, an examination of currency is needed. First, one needs the concept that true incommensurability is difficult to obtain [Kuhn, 2002]. Apples and oranges are disparate but they can be compared on a basis of enough/not enough which is a countable proposition and therefore in language and mathematics. Such an analysis results in the capacity for arbitrage and results in the establishment of relative value or a sum certain of money. Being contained in perception, in language, in mathematics and in money deems an object socially real.
So, there area four currencies in operation. What common feature defines the category? They are all 'relationals' having the intrinsic ability to establish relations between elements of a class. If I see you standing to my left, that is a relation. If I say that you are taller than I, that is a relation. If my $5 buys more than your $3, that is a relation. If I prove that 3 is greater than -3, that is a relation. However, if one shares a currency, then the simple relational aspect of it becomes an entanglement as the concept applies in physics. If you are to my left, I am to your right. We are entangled. If my $5 buys more than your $3, your $3 buys less than my $5. We are entangled. If 3 is proved greater than -3 to you and I, than surely -3 is less than 3 to you and I. We are entangled.These relations are shared by convention and elevate the 'relational' to an entanglement. This is the stuff of social existence.
Part 2 tomorrow
Friday, April 11, 2014
'Games People Play' An Essay in Three Parts
I have been away from Blogger for almost a year while working on many projects including this precise little essay. This post is simply the author's note for the essay and is self explanatory. I apologize for not posting the second part of my last post but must plead intellectual overreach. It wasn't good enough to post.
So read, think, and enjoy my latest production which will be the basis for the content on a novel in progress, 'Forbidden'.
Author's Note
This essay is the result of a six year project which began as an idea for a reading list worthy of study. Having noticed that times had changed and my paradigms and databases had not, I felt the need of amending the body of knowledge that I had mastered. I did so. The reading list ran to some fifty serious volumes and included some at the introductory college level which I find invaluable for understanding what is being said in the context in which it is said. The first incarnation of processing, of integrating this new information was a collection of monographs and schemata of over forty pages. I made several attempts at rationalizing an analytical frame from this material of which the most successful was a difficult essay of some thirty pages.
I continued to refine the ideas this new material generated as I integrated it into some kind of coherent and comprehensive whole. The end result, which is the final form as far as I am concerned, however incomplete, is this essay of which the body runs some seven pages. That is integration! For those who possess any kind of the knowledge represented in this essay, it is intended to provide vocabulary and concepts for the intelligent discussion of contemporary thought.
Part One tomorrow.
So read, think, and enjoy my latest production which will be the basis for the content on a novel in progress, 'Forbidden'.
Author's Note
This essay is the result of a six year project which began as an idea for a reading list worthy of study. Having noticed that times had changed and my paradigms and databases had not, I felt the need of amending the body of knowledge that I had mastered. I did so. The reading list ran to some fifty serious volumes and included some at the introductory college level which I find invaluable for understanding what is being said in the context in which it is said. The first incarnation of processing, of integrating this new information was a collection of monographs and schemata of over forty pages. I made several attempts at rationalizing an analytical frame from this material of which the most successful was a difficult essay of some thirty pages.
I continued to refine the ideas this new material generated as I integrated it into some kind of coherent and comprehensive whole. The end result, which is the final form as far as I am concerned, however incomplete, is this essay of which the body runs some seven pages. That is integration! For those who possess any kind of the knowledge represented in this essay, it is intended to provide vocabulary and concepts for the intelligent discussion of contemporary thought.
Part One tomorrow.
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