Two myths in natural sciences

Natural sciences rest on two fundamental myths (the term is not used in a derogatory senses)

In the first myth man/woman "turns around" and moves towards the past. The past is approached and so it comes "closer" and as it comes "closer" it reveals richer and richer details

In the second myth man/woman approaches and object getting smaller at the same time. He/she is siphoned in the object and in the process the object gets larger and larger revealing richer and richer details

There are also the inverted movements (I move towards the inverted past, the future, but now I can change things- I expand, I become huge, I can grab the solar system in my hand)

Το παρελθόν κρίνει το παρον

"Turning attention toward the body gas the historical merit of having balanced our views of the world of consciousness. If these focuses of attention, however, are radicalized to the point of negating all structures of consciousness that are not directly determined by the body, if basing consciousness in the body hypertrophies into the causation of consiousness by the body, then the radicalization and hyperbolization reveals an attitude that is characterized as morbid in the pneumato-pathological sense of Plato's nosos. The world of consciousness becomes a wasteland (of different degrees in different thinkers), and the facination with the vital sphere -sensuousness and vital forces, their growth and decline- dominates philosophical attitudes"
Voegelin, E. (1990). Anamnesis (Vol. 6). University of Missouri Press. (pg 17)

AIME continuing the dialogue between Ricoeur and Changeux

I think that the dialogue between Changeux and Ricoeur

Changeux, J. P., & Ricoeur, P. (2000). What makes us think. Trans. MB DeBevoise. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

is very interesting and illuminating. Changeux was at the time in his 60s and Ricoeur in his eighties and to my understanding they are not just two people that are arguing (politely) on some important issues. It seems to me that they are also arguing on the significance of their lives, on what they have heartily promoted through their lives.

Ricoeur talks in this book about the great difficulty to devise another discourse, one that is neither the discourse of the phenomenology nor the discourse of scientists but that somehow can make clearer the connection between the other two discourses(for example in page 69).
In my opinion one way to see the contribution of AIME and the Modes of Existence Book is as a way to devise such a different kind of discourse.  Even if it turns out that the effort does not deliver it still feels like the right way to go, a way that allows various sciences and experiences in life to communicate, a way that speaks at the same time about a variety of changes that need to be coordinated and that does not leave the scientific observer and her context, the scientific signs, the fragility and bizarness of human communication outside the account of "objective" knowledge.

A strage sense of self-understanding

In the Modes of Existence Book
pg 410
"the individual is second and secondary, entirely dependent on the multiform roles left in the wake of the courses of contraqdictory injunctions that can never aseemble these roles in a round, solid, full, subject....the agents ... must.. beg from the value meters to which bthey are connected the alms of fragments of approximate reasoning...What do we find in its place? Quivering little beings wandering around groping in the dark while waiting to receive something from the passage of scripts: sometimes fragments of projects, sometimes allocations of preferences, sometimes suggested roles, sometimes quittances"

I am also reminded of Seferis' "Last stop" (http://www.jstor.org/stable/29737258?seq=2#page_scan_tab_contents)

humankind is tender, a sheaf of grass;
 lips and fingers yearning for a white breast
eyes half-closed against the glare of day
and legs that would run, be they never so exhausted,
at the slightest whiff of gain.
Humankind is tender and thirsty as the grass,
insatiable like the grass, its nerves are roots that spread;

(though later:
Can humankind be something different?
Is it not that which transmits life?
A time to sow, a time to reap. )

I am also reminded how much in our experience is a stage and a dream. How much for example is our visual experience full of estimations and coverups, a cloth full of holes and yet feeling so full and complete.  Yet fullness and completeness is not the most basic. The flow of true communication is the most basic and we can learn to accept to live with very limited means if we feel we can secure this.

Similar reading experiences

A similar reading experience when reading the Modes of Existence book and when reading the account of categorical logic and new Axiomatization of Mathematics in Rodin’s book

Axiomatic Method and Category Theory (http://arxiv.org/pdf/1210.1478v1.pdf)

As a reader when I read MOE I have the feeling that I am called to peal out layers of my subjectivity that get externalized into ways of discourse-movement that follow their own specifications (the modes of existence with their own specification) while “me” is left with quite a little “Equipment”.  Perhaps with just dispositions.

Me, a Thomas-Anderson-like figure,  wanting to wake up from the dream  “the  World of the Western Moderns” and wandering in what body I will find what self.

Similarly when I read in Rodin’s book the presentation of how in Categorical Logic in Mathematics , a general “universal” logic is abandoned in favor of  local logics connected to the matter at hand, I have this feeling that “my” logic has stopped being in my head but it now runs “in front of my eyes”,  being projected in perceptible inscriptions.

Πορνεια και διακίνηση γυναικών στην γειτονιά μας (τη στενη και την ευρυτερη)

Going undercover as a sex worker

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2015/06/magazine-undercover-sex-worker-human-trafficking-150610072623672.html

For the past decade, photographer and filmmaker Mimi Chakarova has covered global issues examining conflict, corruption and the sex trade. Her film The Price of Sex, a feature-length documentary on trafficking and corruption premiered in 2011.

How to read the final table in the MOE book

After putting a lot of effort I arrived to the following formula that is helpful to me


A line can be read like this:

The mode [#MODE#] extracts out of being-as-other (which I imagine as a short of a beehive, a mess of activity) the alteration of #alteration# (so I imagine out of this undifferentiated mess, which reminds a bit the "Waters" at the beginning of the Bible, coming forth the #alteration#)  which is brought forth through the extension of trajectories of #trajectory#  that constantly overcome the hiatus that consists of #hiatus# , and these trajectories move on when the flow of the mode #felicity condition#  rather than #infelicity condition# and finally the flow of the mode in the trajectories leaves in its wake #beings to institute#.


For example

The mode [FIC] extracts out of being-as-other (which I imagine as a short of a beehive, a mess of activity) the alteration of multiplying worlds (so I imagine out of this undifferentiated mess, which reminds a bit the "Waters" at the beginning of the Bible, coming forth various "worlds"- actually the type "world" together with multiplicity, rather than worlds with specific details)  which is brought forth through the extension of trajectories of triple shifting (time, space, actant) that constantly overcome the hiatus that consists of vacillations between material and form , and these trajectories move on when the flow of the mode makes something hold up, makes believe  rather than causes to fail, loses and finally the flow of the mode in the trajectories leaves in its wake dispatches, figurations, forms, works of art.


I still have questions though:

A.When a being tries to pass the hiatus of [FIC] but the felicity condition is negative does this mean that the trajectory stops there or does it mean that the trajectory continues but the quality is somehow compromised?
If for example I am a director, can my theatrical play fail "partially" to move fictionally?

B.How do [FIC] trajectories (to take an example) begin and end? In what whay can an assembly bring forth the beginning of a [FIC] trajectory when nothing was there?
(Experientially it must be like at some point finding suddenly myself in medias res: I was a person holding a pen and now I am somebody who already remembers a recent past of having been visited by the Muse)

C. Beings circulate and achieve their subsistence through passes through other beings but also beings are instituted and left at the wake of the flow taking place in the trajectories and also it seems that there are beings that "Visit" collectives (?) (for example humans, like the [MET] beings) to articulate on them the alteration that they carry.
So there are beings of different compositions (single or multimodal) and having different functional roles relative to the trajectories.
"Being" seems like a term that does too many things in the MOE book.

Questions for the Modes of Existence book

1
MOE pg 454
"As this entire inquiry attests, deprived of other beings any existent whatsoever would cease at once to exist . Its very existence, its subsitance, is defined by the supreme duty to explore through what other beings it must pass to subsist, to earn its subsistence, This is what I have called its ARTICULATION"

In MOE there are beings that seem to fit particular modes (beings that are instituted by modes) and beings that probably are to be treated as composite. Trajectories are usually related (if I understand well) to movements along specific modes, while "courses of action" seem to be multimodal .

To me there is an issue of construction, of synthesis here. It is one thing to find analogies with modes and crossings while considering different issues (the kind one sees in Contributions). It is another thing to think and speak and act coherently in these terms in a steady way.

2. The MOE book (and the platform) "teaches" something counterintuitive, a way against our thinking habits. So it has a [MET] character: it is made to metamorphose us, to give us "ears to hear".  But at the same time it acknowledges the existence of a collective that is comming together around a concern: "Making something valuable out of the mixed bag of the inheritence of previous generations of moderns".  It is a matter of "saving lives".
But it is not [REL]. It sounds more like St. John than like Christ.

It all sounds like an intense exploration of how far human distributivity goes, how far the network that supports A human consciousness can go, and what  beings are now heard through the resonators that are built by such networks. Since the MOE book addresses a human collective I do not see how the Aristotles' "spoudaios" can be shortcircuited. Even if devices for moral calculations are used either human judgement (the kind that is enlightenable, that is susceptible to the Holy Spirit) is present as crucial or we are in Huxley's world

"Are you my end?" Who is the recipient of this question that the (reformed?) Modern collective poses?  (Is this [REL] mode?)


3. same page " ..an enigma is posed to every existent: "If I exist only through the other, which of us then is the end and which the means? I, who have to pass by way of it, am I its means or is it mine? Am I the end or is it my end?"

How is one to take such a statement?
a) Has Latour found a way to have direct contact to the enigmas posed on every existent? Do existents speak to him par excellence about what happens to them? Is this a kind of revealed wisdom and Latour is here the carrier of revelation? It seems to me a bit far fetched
b) Is Latour proposing to us a new set of  memes for our brain software? "Let us start thinking as if... and see where we will end". It sounds like fiction. What about alternative fictions (for example different species leaving massively existence in the current biological countdown but through a spirit of exhileration, really enjoying this passing to nirvana. The fish species that now disapears perhaps feels having set accounts fine.)? How are alternative fictions to be weighted and compared? To me seems that in the end there are persons, communities, institutions that lock and support convictions. Is the solution to this pazzle unique? What if there are "multiple solutions"? For the time being modern life seems to be using massive doses of various "tranquilizers" so that we don't try the find out in vivo.
c) Is Latour claiming that each human existent is so "fractaled-out" that each one's finding one's own "voice" has as a requirement the instituting of many many other "voices" of existents that now talk their moral concerns as well? Is there anybody in AIME living their self-experience in such a way? Can they live this way not only under affluent conditions but in the variety of human situations one usually encounters around the world?
d)???? Something else????

Socrates and Protagoras discuss

It has been a long time and still I remembed reading this part of the dialogue (or what Plato made of it)
(Source: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1591/1591-h/1591-h.htm)

" And I said: Protagoras, I have a wretched memory, and when any one makes a long speech to me I never remember what he is talking about. As then, if I had been deaf, and you were going to converse with me, you would have had to raise your voice; so now, having such a bad memory, I will ask you to cut your answers shorter, if you would take me with you.

What do you mean? he said: how am I to shorten my answers? shall I make them too short?

Certainly not, I said.

But short enough?

Yes, I said.

Shall I answer what appears to me to be short enough, or what appears to you to be short enough?

I have heard, I said, that you can speak and teach others to speak about the same things at such length that words never seemed to fail, or with such brevity that no one could use fewer of them. Please therefore, if you talk with me, to adopt the latter or more compendious method.

Socrates, he replied, many a battle of words have I fought, and if I had followed the method of disputation which my adversaries desired, as you want me to do, I should have been no better than another, and the name of Protagoras would have been nowhere.

I saw that he was not satisfied with his previous answers, and that he would not play the part of answerer any more if he could help; and I considered that there was no call upon me to continue the conversation; so I said: Protagoras, I do not wish to force the conversation upon you if you had rather not, but when you are willing to argue with me in such a way that I can follow you, then I will argue with you. Now you, as is said of you by others and as you say of yourself, are able to have discussions in shorter forms of speech as well as in longer, for you are a master of wisdom; but I cannot manage these long speeches: I only wish that I could. You, on the other hand, who are capable of either, ought to speak shorter as I beg you, and then we might converse. But I see that you are disinclined, and as I have an engagement which will prevent my staying to hear you at greater length (for I have to be in another place), I will depart; although I should have liked to have heard you.

Thus I spoke, and was rising from my seat, when Callias seized me by the right hand, and in his left hand caught hold of this old cloak of mine. He said: We cannot let you go, Socrates, for if you leave us there will be an end of our discussions: I must therefore beg you to remain, as there is nothing in the world that I should like better than to hear you and Protagoras discourse. Do not deny the company this pleasure.

Now I had got up, and was in the act of departure. Son of Hipponicus, I replied, I have always admired, and do now heartily applaud and love your philosophical spirit, and I would gladly comply with your request, if I could. But the truth is that I cannot. And what you ask is as great an impossibility to me, as if you bade me run a race with Crison of Himera, when in his prime, or with some one of the long or day course runners. To such a request I should reply that I would fain ask the same of my own legs; but they refuse to comply. And therefore if you want to see Crison and me in the same stadium, you must bid him slacken his speed to mine, for I cannot run quickly, and he can run slowly. And in like manner if you want to hear me and Protagoras discoursing, you must ask him to shorten his answers, and keep to the point, as he did at first; if not, how can there be any discussion? For discussion is one thing, and making an oration is quite another, in my humble opinion."

Talking about changes of scale

1.       In Pg 402 we are urged “ to treat the large as a fragile, instrumental extension of the small”

To anybody trained in the Natural sciences this reminds emerging phenomena, especially emerging phenomena related to small rules that lead to unexpected global behaviors (like a traffic jam or event in an ant colony).  However in these cases one tends to start from an individual (indeed there is a question of the kind: “what is the starting point, the small entity based on which changes of scale will show up)

Now the Individual, as we usually tend to use this term, is not the intended starting point here:

• “The individual is dispersed into mutually incompatible scripts”
• “The individual “Peter” is infinitely divisible, despite its etymology, into hundreds of “Peters” whose spatial, temporal, and actantial continuity is not assured by any isotopy “ (though I did not understand well the meaning of isotopy)”
• “The individual is an overly unified aggregate”

So the starting point is different, probably some kind of elementary script.

If I am to follow the little I know from Physics we have qualitatively different paths that we could follow towards expressing  changes of size (which I think is the same as “relative scaling” in the book). One way is the one mentioned above ( in accordance to the way the emergence of traffic jams is explained using simple rules for simple agents)

However there is another way to speak about changes in aggregation which in my understanding is closer to expressions like the following (pg 404):

“If there is something “enlarging” , it is that a new being is circulating, as original in its genre as the political cycle [POL], which makes it possible to make anything it grasps change size [POL. ORG]”

Αυθεντικές δράσεις

Η αφορμή:
Κοιτάζω στο ηλεκτρονικό ταχυδρομείο της γυναίκας μου άν έχει λάβει ένα μήνυμα που την ενδιέφερε. Το μήνυμα δεν έχει έρθει και λέω στα μεγάλα κορίτσια μου (Γ και Δ Δημοτικου) να πούν στη μητέρα τους τη σχετική πληροφορία (αφου εξηγήσω λίγο το θέμα). Αποφασίζουν ότι χρειάζεται να γράψουν το μήνυμα για τη μητέρα τους. ΟΜΩΣ βρίσκουν δυσκολία στο να μετασχηματίσουν αυτο που τους λέω σε ένα μήνυμα που θα τους θυμίζει τι πρέπει να πουν στη μητέρα τους. Σχεδόν μου ζητούν να τους το υπαγορεύσω ώστε απλώς να το διαβάσουν.

Σκέφτομαι:
 οτι πολλές φορές ζητάμε απο τους εκπαιδευτικούς να σχεδιάσουν αυθεντικές περιστάσεις ώστε οι μαθητές να χρησιμοποιούν τη γλώσσα "με νόημα". Όμως συνειδητοποιώ οτι είναι οι γονείς εκείνοι οι οποίοι έχουν στο μέγιστο βαθμό αυτη την ευκαιρία. Αντίθετα δεν ειναι καθόλου εύκολο να κάνει κάτι τετοιο ο εκπαιδευτικος και να απευθυνθεί σε πολλά παιδιά.
Αλλα ο γονιός δεν ξέρει πού να δώσει έμφαση. Μπορει να το κάνει διαισθητικά αλλά θα μπορούσε να ειναι πολυ αποτελεσματικός αν ήξερε πέντε πράγματα.

Σκέφτομαι:
Πόσο σημαντική ειναι η επικοινωνία του εκπαιδευτικού με το γονιό. Το να μιλήσει με το γονιό για το ποιοι αντιλαμβάνεται ο ιδιος να ειναι οι στόχοι της εκπαιδευσης και της παιδείας του παιδιού του αυτη τη χρονιά. Να βοηθήσει το γονιό να αναγνωρίζει και να εκμεταλεύεται ευκαιρίες στο σπίτι. Να αναγνωρίζει ευκαιρίες που στη συνέχεια μπορούν να κοινοποιηθούν στο σχολείο και να δώσουν ¨πάσες¨ στον εκπαιδευτικό.

Σκέφτομαι:
σχεδόν χρειάζεται μια παράλληλη πορεία μάθησης απο μέρους του γονιού. Αλλά δεν υπάρχει

When a scientist complains about a philosopher

1.   1.   Philip Anderson (which I think one can say safely that he knows something about how Physics is done http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Warren_Anderson) “screams” against Nancy Cartwright in

Anderson, P. W. (2001). Science: A ‘dappled world’or a ‘seamless web’?.Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 32(3), 487-494.

To me the “dappled world” Anderson has Cartwright believe in is very much like the world of sciences against the world of Science that Latour speaks about.

Indeed Anderson takes a strong position:

He claims that Cartwright holds  “a very common misconception…. [that] the primary goal of science is prediction, prediction in the sense of being able (or at least wishing) to exactly calculate the outcome of some determinate set of initial conditions.

Against this Anderson states that the primary goal of science is:

“to achieve an accurate, rational, objective, and unified view of external reality.”

In the spirit of negotiations let us see in the article what he really cares about.