Turning word: in Dogen‘s Japanese, 轉 語 [tengo], ‘Statement that crushes delusion and leads to liberation’ (Tanahashi 2010, 1152). Who is this turning the dharma wheel? Who is this turning the page?
Entering is the basis. The basis is from beginning to end.
— Dogen, ‘Bukkyo’ (Tanahashi 2010, 286)
God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.
— Thoreau, Walden, chp. 2
George Monbiot on the plague of isolation, posted on his blog 12 October 2016. This shows how the mental health of young people today is related to what Peirce called the social principle behind all human use of language (and other sign-systems).
something we need
to remember but know
will sink into subsoil
its appearance up here
marked by this sinsign planted:
4 October 2016
only if ever to seedaylight
as memento of this moment of
bypassing
Now it is precisely the pragmatist’s contention that symbols, owing their origin (on one side) to human conventions, cannot transcend conceivable human occasions. At any rate, it is plain that no possible collection of single occasions of conduct can be, or adequately represent all conceivable occasions. For there is no collection of individuals of any general description which we could not conceive to receive the addition of other individuals of the same description aggregated to it. The generality of the possible, the only true generality, is distributive, not collective. You perhaps do not see how this remark bears upon your question.
— from a dialogue by Peirce, CP 5.532 (c. 1905)
The distinction made here between distributivity and collectivity corresponds to the normal terminology of intension and extension.
— Stjernfelt 2007, 7
meanwhile
Something forgets us perfectly
— Leonard Cohen, ‘For E.J.P.’
I am simultaneously writing and being written.
— Hofstadter (1985, 11)
This sentence to be reverbed.
A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.
— Alfred Korzybski, Science and Sanity (1933, p. 58)
We say that the map is not the territory, but if the territory includes the map, there must be a point on the map that represents itself. ‘On a map of an island laid down upon the soil of that island there must, under all ordinary circumstances, be some position, some point, marked or not, that represents qua place on the map, the very same point qua place on the island’ (Peirce, CP 2.230; see also EP2:161-2, BD ‘Imaging’). The same must be true of any “map of the world,” any iconic sign which takes its context as its object. Hence any viable guidance system inhabiting a being inhabiting its world must involve self-reference.
Here we have a map of the Island, lying flat on the Island itself. It doesn’t cover much of the surface of the Island, yet it represents all of it, iconically, to you. The Map is a sign whose object is the actually existing Island and whose interpretant is the form of the Island in your imagination. This representation exemplifies what Peirce calls Thirdness.
Now suppose your point of view rises high enough above the Island (above the Earth) that you can see all of it, as if on Google Maps or Google Earth: the map on the Island is visible only as a single point on the googlemap. But now suppose that the googlemap is capable of unlimited resolution, so that you can zoom in on the map far enough to view it in what we call ‘actual size.’ Now you realize that there is a point on the map (the original map, the omap) which represents the map itself lying on the surface of the Island. And now suppose that you can keep on zooming in on that very point until it grows to the actual size of the omap. Now it is no longer a point but a large set of points (an infinitely large set, actually) representing the place on the Island where the omap lies, and representing the omap itself to you. Still, on this map within the omap which represents the omap, you can mark a point representing where the omap lies on the Island. But if the omap itself is capable of infinite resolution, you can keep on zooming in on map after map – and on each map, you can mark the same point representing the omap within the map, and zoom in on it to find another actual-size map with that same point on it.
Now, as everyone knows, infinite resolution is a fantasy and a ‘point’ with zero dimensions is a mathematical abstraction. But in our thought-experiment, the Island is real, and the omap is actually lying on it. So if the dream of infinite resolution could be lived, there must be (at least) a point on every map, no matter how many times you zoom in on the map in it, which represents the next point you could zoom in on in real time to see the next map represented on it. And if you reverse the process, no matter how far you zoom out, that same point must be there on the map on which the location of the map is marked.
We have been using the word point in reference to a τόπος, a place. But a 0-dimensional point cannot contain anything. Topologically, if a “map” (a surface) is continuous, and no place is marked on it, there are no points on it at all. No matter how far we zoom in, we never arrive at a place that contains no other places. Just as everything that exists (‘stands out’) in any given universe is a discontinuity in it, every point marked on a line or a surface, or in a space, is a discontinuity of it.
Yet the making of a mark creates the possibility of representing the relations between marks on a continuous surface or in a continuous space. The representation is iconic, but the relations depicted in it may be real. Such a representation of existing things or events creates the possibility of observing real relations between them, relations which have a specific character independent of any particular observation of them. If those relations are real, then the universe in which the relata are marked must be really continuous. There can be no definite discontinuities except in a continuum; nothing can mean anything except in a meaning space.
Another of His signs is the creation of the heavens and earth, and the diversity of your languages and colours. There truly are signs in this for those who know. Among His signs are your sleep, by night and by day, and your seeking His bounty. There truly are signs in this for those who can hear. Among His signs, too, are that He shows you the lightning that terrifies and inspires hope; that He sends water down from the sky to restore the earth to life after death. There truly are signs in this for those who use their reason.
— Qur’an 30:22-4 (tr. M.A.S. Abdel Haleem)
Due to popular demand, i’m offering a series of seminars where readers of Turning Signs can get together in small groups to share their questions, comments and responses to it. Read all about it on the new seminar page. The first session is slated for October 13.
And by even more popular demand, i’m getting some paperback copies printed. They will cost $20 (plus shipping if necessary). Email me (or comment on this post) if you want one. It should be available in a few weeks.
Computer models of game theory have been used to investigate the evolution of moral principles and precepts. A famous example is Axelrod’s computer tournament which modelled the ‘prisoner’s dilemma’ situation, in which the player has to decide (at each point in a series of interactions with another player) whether to ‘cooperate’ or ‘defect.’ Various algorithms were submitted and interacted with each other; then the scores were totalled up, and the strategy which scored highest in the long run was declared the winner. One outcome of this modeling process was a set of four precepts generally followed by the strategies that performed best in the tournament (Barlow 1991, 132):
- Don’t be envious.
- Don’t be the first to defect.
- Reciprocate both cooperation and defection.
- Don’t be too clever.
These resemble some familiar religious precepts, although the third contradicts the Christian injunction to ‘turn the other cheek’ and Chapter 49 of the Tao Te Ching:
To the good I act with goodness;
To the bad I also act with goodness:
Thus goodness is attained.
To the faithful I act with faith;
To the faithless I also act with faith:
Thus faith is attained.— tr. Ch‘u Ta-Kao
But then these guidance systems would probably define ‘winning’ differently from the rules of Axelrod’s tournament. Besides, subsequent tournaments made it clear that which strategy wins depends on what other strategies are in the game, which ones are dominant and which marginal. The implication is that reducing your strategy to an algorithm is not in itself a viable strategy, though it might be useful for modeling how strategies evolve.
What really matters is the complex reciprocal dance in which the brain tailors its activity to a technological and sociocultural environment, which—in concert with other brains—it simultaneously alters and amends. Human intelligence owes just about everything to this looping process of mutual accommodation.
— Clark (2003, 87)
Within the self-world or system/environment loop is the brain-body loop, and within that, other loops:
The proprioceptive and interoceptive loops are closed outside the brain but inside the body. The preafferent loops are within the brain, updating the sensory cortices to expect the consequences of incipient actions.
— diagram in Freeman 2000, 222 (see also Clark 2003, 106)
These provide a preconscious form of anticipation which works faster than sensorimotor loops. The nervous system guides its body by implicitly comparing these expectations with the real consequences of action as they are sensed. In dreaming, the sensing of external reality is cut off from this loop, so the sensation of (for instance) flying is experienced as actual (Hobson 2002, 27-8). When reality checks are temporarily left out of the loop, fantasy and discovery alike find their way into the cultural universe, for some newly imagined forms later turn out to inform the external world.