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.
Friday, April 11, 2014
Thursday, May 9, 2013
A Pragmatic Postmodern Approach to Communication Part I
If one rejects the Grand Narrative of Western Civilization, one is belaboring the obvious. The Grand Narrative and in a large sense, the values of Western Civilization are in significant abeyance. However, if one therefore reduces history to a picaresque chronology holding no meaning, one is not a postmodernist but definitively a nihilist. They are profoundly not the same thing.
As I examine the last century I see the Grand Narrative being replaced by a Grand Design created by the Invisible Hand of the market deploying technology developed by the petite narrative of science. This process is totally pragmatic and operationally amoral. The Grand Design is not in its essence Western Civilization even though Western Civilization developed the disciplines, with help from other civilizations, that produced it. It is a spectacularly different animal that we traditionally label the Industrial Revolution and casually reference, in an intellectually nonstandard usage, as Modernism.
To be a postmodernist one must recognize the lessons of both the petite narrative of science and the logic of technological development. To do so is to recognize that postmodernism is 'after' modernism in the sense that it means one is ahead of the curve of the petite narrative and the technological logic, not behind them. The 'beyond' of postmodernism lies in the sense that one is grasping a wholly new phenomenon describing a universe as different from the 18th century as the 13th was from the 10th. It is, as Thomas S. Kuhn described, a paradigm shift, a different world, and if one knows Kuhn's work, one is acutely aware that one does not author a paradigm shift, one authors a superior model that causes a paradigm shift.
We are in possession of enough new theory and enough new technology to destroy the Grand Narrative, but then we had those in the 1920's. What we haven't demonstrated is enough of both to create a new world of narrative and values sufficient to allow empowerment and quality of life across a broad spectrum of society. We still operate economically as too zero sum, too La Belle Epoque, to establish a sustainable basis for legitimate social existence. We are, to the point, too nihilist.
The object of this particular exercise is to reference significant intellectual developments created by the clash of the Grand Narrative and the Grand Design over the last two centuries and to establish the basis of a model of communication. It would not be too far off the mark to say that social existence is communication. If we are to create a new model to supersede the Grand Design which, by the way, has been estimated by everyone from Schumpeter to Von Neumann to have a logical terminus, we should, I believe, begin with communication and so I have made this attempt to be described in Part II.
As I examine the last century I see the Grand Narrative being replaced by a Grand Design created by the Invisible Hand of the market deploying technology developed by the petite narrative of science. This process is totally pragmatic and operationally amoral. The Grand Design is not in its essence Western Civilization even though Western Civilization developed the disciplines, with help from other civilizations, that produced it. It is a spectacularly different animal that we traditionally label the Industrial Revolution and casually reference, in an intellectually nonstandard usage, as Modernism.
To be a postmodernist one must recognize the lessons of both the petite narrative of science and the logic of technological development. To do so is to recognize that postmodernism is 'after' modernism in the sense that it means one is ahead of the curve of the petite narrative and the technological logic, not behind them. The 'beyond' of postmodernism lies in the sense that one is grasping a wholly new phenomenon describing a universe as different from the 18th century as the 13th was from the 10th. It is, as Thomas S. Kuhn described, a paradigm shift, a different world, and if one knows Kuhn's work, one is acutely aware that one does not author a paradigm shift, one authors a superior model that causes a paradigm shift.
We are in possession of enough new theory and enough new technology to destroy the Grand Narrative, but then we had those in the 1920's. What we haven't demonstrated is enough of both to create a new world of narrative and values sufficient to allow empowerment and quality of life across a broad spectrum of society. We still operate economically as too zero sum, too La Belle Epoque, to establish a sustainable basis for legitimate social existence. We are, to the point, too nihilist.
The object of this particular exercise is to reference significant intellectual developments created by the clash of the Grand Narrative and the Grand Design over the last two centuries and to establish the basis of a model of communication. It would not be too far off the mark to say that social existence is communication. If we are to create a new model to supersede the Grand Design which, by the way, has been estimated by everyone from Schumpeter to Von Neumann to have a logical terminus, we should, I believe, begin with communication and so I have made this attempt to be described in Part II.
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
House Wins!
The theoretical structure of zero-sum two person games ignores a basic fact that anyone who has visited a casino will tell you. Everytime a game is played, the house, the socioeconomic context of that game, wins. Poker is thought of as a zero-sum game but the house always gets its cut.
If I buy a computer from you, it is a guessing game and a negotiation as to what the value of the computer really is since at any given moment in the economic picture there is a cost/benefit value to that computer in terms of what I will do with it and this value can theoretically be computed ex post facto. That is the nature of market transactions. I cannot know the value of the computer and neither can you so we reference similar transactions, a game in itself, and make our best guess.
When the sale is complete, taxes are paid, paychecks are honored, corporate bonds paid, and profits, point of sale and up the line, are generated. The house wins. Zero-sum two person games are amenable to mathematical modeling. The question is, are they amenable to reality. Can we extrapolate the behavior and the model to actual market activity? A few months ago I proposed a simple systems theory model that would context the transaction game. Add in a cut for the house, the political economy, and that model would fly as a replicated building block of an actual economy. With a scaled out computer doing parallel processing, the computation is doable.
Are the mathematics of a transaction game with a cut for the house doable? I don't know. I'm not John Von Neumann. I am just suggesting a possible systems model that is easily in reach of reality.
Do well and be well!
If I buy a computer from you, it is a guessing game and a negotiation as to what the value of the computer really is since at any given moment in the economic picture there is a cost/benefit value to that computer in terms of what I will do with it and this value can theoretically be computed ex post facto. That is the nature of market transactions. I cannot know the value of the computer and neither can you so we reference similar transactions, a game in itself, and make our best guess.
When the sale is complete, taxes are paid, paychecks are honored, corporate bonds paid, and profits, point of sale and up the line, are generated. The house wins. Zero-sum two person games are amenable to mathematical modeling. The question is, are they amenable to reality. Can we extrapolate the behavior and the model to actual market activity? A few months ago I proposed a simple systems theory model that would context the transaction game. Add in a cut for the house, the political economy, and that model would fly as a replicated building block of an actual economy. With a scaled out computer doing parallel processing, the computation is doable.
Are the mathematics of a transaction game with a cut for the house doable? I don't know. I'm not John Von Neumann. I am just suggesting a possible systems model that is easily in reach of reality.
Do well and be well!
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Sumer, Greece, America, and Conan
Having abandoned a writing project because the ideas which I was trying to illuminate with the story were a little unclear to me, I went for a bike ride into desolation because I am always alone in the wild when I see the world and decided to linebacker my databases and paradigms by filling the gap of a relatively new subject, Sumer and its civilization. I began to read in things Sumerian.
I found there a mythos and art of civilization that surpassed the Greeks. The Sumerians invented civilization and significant elements they originated were given to the Greeks by way of succeeding societies. Sumerian myth is like getting civilization from the horse's mouth; Greek myth is like reportage. Let me qualify this bold statement by saying that if I were to be stranded on an island and given the task of recreating civilization using one written work, it would be 'Prometheus Bound', the Greek classic.
However, I find in my acquaintance with Greek myth no succinct statement of the essential act of civilization, the ethos of the whole milieu we so label, as the Sumerian: 'The good things from the pure sheepfold are why man was given breath.' It is all there, stewardship, husbandry, and artisanship, the essential roles of civilization. I find nothing so real, so illuminating as the story that Enki, the god of wisdom, was drunk when he decreed the arts of civilization. It probably was not a particularly wise thing to do as the Sumerians found out when Conan, I am being metaphorical, had their lunch.
Civilization proceeds at a measured pace in a world of great risk. Exceed your wisdom, La Belle Epoque, and you risk losing everything, the First World War and all that followed. Hubris, as the Greeks termed the sin of pride, is as true now as it was then. Do not tempt the gods, Conan is waiting.
There is a shiny new world being born today that smacks of hubris, from the highways to the cell towers to Amazon.com, there is that pride in taking risks and reaping rewards that does so tempt the gods.
Be Well and Do Well.
I found there a mythos and art of civilization that surpassed the Greeks. The Sumerians invented civilization and significant elements they originated were given to the Greeks by way of succeeding societies. Sumerian myth is like getting civilization from the horse's mouth; Greek myth is like reportage. Let me qualify this bold statement by saying that if I were to be stranded on an island and given the task of recreating civilization using one written work, it would be 'Prometheus Bound', the Greek classic.
However, I find in my acquaintance with Greek myth no succinct statement of the essential act of civilization, the ethos of the whole milieu we so label, as the Sumerian: 'The good things from the pure sheepfold are why man was given breath.' It is all there, stewardship, husbandry, and artisanship, the essential roles of civilization. I find nothing so real, so illuminating as the story that Enki, the god of wisdom, was drunk when he decreed the arts of civilization. It probably was not a particularly wise thing to do as the Sumerians found out when Conan, I am being metaphorical, had their lunch.
Civilization proceeds at a measured pace in a world of great risk. Exceed your wisdom, La Belle Epoque, and you risk losing everything, the First World War and all that followed. Hubris, as the Greeks termed the sin of pride, is as true now as it was then. Do not tempt the gods, Conan is waiting.
There is a shiny new world being born today that smacks of hubris, from the highways to the cell towers to Amazon.com, there is that pride in taking risks and reaping rewards that does so tempt the gods.
Be Well and Do Well.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Towards an Integrated, Comprehensive Systems Theory of Economic Behavior
Key to this discussion is the assumption that human economic behavior is a self-regulating ecosystem of material existence. This assumption is made on the basis of observable facts involving market economies where resource scarcity leads to higher commodity prices and those prices modify economic decisions and behavior. That is definitely a feedback loop and that is where this paper begins, with a definition of the feedback loop in human economic behavior.
The feedback loop consists of five elements:
1.Discriminating disjoint system
This is a special usage of disjoint from mathematics and means no more than that a human being in the role of economic agent is possessed of integrity and judgement.
2. Entanglement
Taken from quantum mechanics, the usage is here simpler and more intuitive. Human beings, in other words, are entangled by language, monetary system, and quantifying methodology which provide the common basis for the measurement of economic behavior.
3. Information operations
This is simply the codification of the value adding task which involves a modification of information.
4. Discovery
This is the point at which markets define the feedback loop. A market is a game in which the relative value in currency of a value addition is discovered. Markets function under conditions of imperfect information and are therefore approximate and mercurial in the moment and efficient over unspecified time periods defined by changing conditions of material existence.
5. Feedback
Discovery information applied by an economic applied by an economic agent to future economic behavior.
The element of interest in this discussion is that of entanglements since that is a term from another discipline applied in a novel fashion through information theory to systems theory. Entanglements involve no more than roles and relationships. If I am another human being standing directly to your left, then you are a human being standing to my right. We are entangled. Similarly, language involves roles and relationships in any communication as does the more or less of a monetary system.
Human economic behavior, then, consists of an information loop involving modification, discovery, and feedback among disjoint discriminating systems. It is no more or less than that. Economic behavior is the primary social behavior of human beings and is conditional upon meaning defined psychological space, integrity, and informed mental discrimination, judgement.
The feedback loop consists of five elements:
1.Discriminating disjoint system
This is a special usage of disjoint from mathematics and means no more than that a human being in the role of economic agent is possessed of integrity and judgement.
2. Entanglement
Taken from quantum mechanics, the usage is here simpler and more intuitive. Human beings, in other words, are entangled by language, monetary system, and quantifying methodology which provide the common basis for the measurement of economic behavior.
3. Information operations
This is simply the codification of the value adding task which involves a modification of information.
4. Discovery
This is the point at which markets define the feedback loop. A market is a game in which the relative value in currency of a value addition is discovered. Markets function under conditions of imperfect information and are therefore approximate and mercurial in the moment and efficient over unspecified time periods defined by changing conditions of material existence.
5. Feedback
Discovery information applied by an economic applied by an economic agent to future economic behavior.
The element of interest in this discussion is that of entanglements since that is a term from another discipline applied in a novel fashion through information theory to systems theory. Entanglements involve no more than roles and relationships. If I am another human being standing directly to your left, then you are a human being standing to my right. We are entangled. Similarly, language involves roles and relationships in any communication as does the more or less of a monetary system.
Human economic behavior, then, consists of an information loop involving modification, discovery, and feedback among disjoint discriminating systems. It is no more or less than that. Economic behavior is the primary social behavior of human beings and is conditional upon meaning defined psychological space, integrity, and informed mental discrimination, judgement.
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Radical Instrumentalism
First, let me make a mea culpa. I am being fast and loose with the concept of instrumentalism. Postmodernists as a group push the limit of that concept. Instrumentalism is a philosophical doctrine within empiricism that judges a theory by its explanatory power. It is only a step from that to the radical instrumentalism that Dewey himself decried of an epistemology that states that we do not 'know' reality, only our perception of it.
Throw in modified Kantian 'hardwired' concepts, once again fast and loose, and you have my position in which I am borrowing a term from a rigorous empiricist and expanding and modifying it to 'explain' phenomena. Would Dewey object? Absolutely. He drew the line at such epistemological exercise. It is only with Kuhn that the boundary of pragmatism is extended beyond empiricism into the mechanics of mind and the limits of the possible.
Would Dewey understand? Absolutely. As we move to the convergence of Information Theory there is no question that pragmatism has been altered out of all recognition by an organic evolution of truth. He would be dismayed at the lack of a general purpose which he equated with meaning but he would accept individual purpose as meaningful which is the art of postmodernism.
Do good and be well.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Language, Thought and Reality (revisited)
Benjamin Lee Whorf once wrote an important little book of linguistic studies titled, 'Language, Thought and Reality'. It ranks with the work of Dewey and Kuhn as seminal American thought. However, Whorf wrote instrumentalism somewhat out of the picture in his study of how language and reality influence each other. In fact, language and thought are interactive but significantly not the same thing. Thought is influenced by our perception of reality and subject to critical failure driving aberrant cognition when that thought and that perception are demonstrably incommensurable, i.e. when there is a low degree of coincidence.
Faced with three disjunct systems, one is forced onto a central dichotomy, thought and reality which are arguably incommensurate , and an information calculus, language, which is, as Wordsworth brilliantly put it, 'the language of the sense', disjunct from both but relational to both which is identical to perception. Perceptions, the senses, are not thought and neither, as simple experiments show, are they reality. Language, however abstract, is rooted in perception and reflective of the interaction between whatever is 'out there' and cognition. It informs both our thought and our perception of reality and there is the genius of Whorf.
Do good and be well.
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