Month: January 2009

observing the observer

So then to begin in the middle I have many questions:

What constitutes an observer? How do we think about what an observer is/does? Is it as simply complex as the recursive: “An observer creates distinctions; distinctions create observers.”?

What is a distinction? In order for it to occur, does it require only an observer, or is there also an ‘observed’? If so, what constitutes the observed if we are speaking of it before the act of observation? Or is there no such thing as an ‘observed’ before its being observed? Is it possible for the specific distinction within the observed to be meaningless before observation while still maintaining on a higher order level that there is a realm of the ‘unobserved-observed’?

I mean to think about this issue as much as possible without the benefit of assumptions, knowing this is impossible.

Does the concept of the complementarity of field/wave in quantum physics help conceptualize this problem? Physicists can speak of descriptions of … using words that evoke particulate metaphors or wave-like metaphors. The … is always …, although some like to speak of wavicles to try and express the idea that beneath (?) the individual descriptions of what happens in particle physics experiments as either particle-like or wave-like, some more encompassing ‘reality’ is manifesting in an either/or fashion while remaining singular in itself.

The epistemological issue of the observer/observed qua cybernetics thus seems analogically exact to the epistemological dilemmas raised in our attempts to understand the quantum mechanics. Both point to some aspect of recursion as a central feature of any potential ordering of knowledge.

January 30, 2009
falling horizons

today I stand on the horizon
beyond the vast, known spaces
my steps tracing a Moebius membrane
as the white sea pours through my heart
no there, no past, no unwanted memory
–all swept lovingly into the waves
seeds for waiting oysters

did you know that I could fly?
I didn’t either until the wind caught my wings,
and the rock’s weighty tomes fell ponderously away
like the unexpected removal of an atrophied, forgotten limb
the only thing between my life and some great height

it was the sound of the air rippling behind the gulls wing,
the inevitable pulsing call of invisibly present stars
–shining. always shining
and I eagerly ask

who is singing the song that calls the fruit to bud?
what whispered word ripens them? why must our ears be so ignorant?
does not silent nature speak with my mouth?
touch with my porous skin? cry these salty tears?

nature, like an atrophied, forgotten limb, has been removed
–or perhaps I am the limb of nature,
which, only newly awakened, cannot yet know its mother
for I usurp her ears, her skin, her tears,
assume them like a mask stretched taught over this shifting body
while I forget how my wings lift me up
though their rhythm ever flows on

which is why I am here, cradled by the rocks and wind
endless waves spread out before my dangling feet,
waiting to reach the horizon

January 28, 2009
concerning the evolution of consciousness

Earth –> Day-waking (i.e. ‘normal’ adult) consciousness
Water –> Imaginative consciousness
Air —-> Inspirational consciousness
Fire —> Intuitive consciousness

Earth –> Thinking ‘about’ – object-oriented
Water –> Thinking ‘with’ – process oriented
Air —-> Thinking ‘between’ – polarity-oriented, (Brad exemplifies this very well)
Fire —-> Thinking ‘as’ – whole-oriented

Further, considering that all thinking is relational, and all relations are between beings:

Earth –> consciousness of other as if the other was an object (separation)
Water –> consciousness of other as if you were dreaming into the other’s experience, as if you were ‘seeing’ in an inner way the other’s perspective
Air —-> consciousness of other “as if” you were the other from the inside, as if you were ‘hearing’ in an inner way the tonality of the other’s experience
Fire —> consciousness of other AS the other, as if the other were living through and into you directly, with almost no distinction between who is who

The sequence is one which lays out the polarities between separation and coincidence of self and other. Goethe made a strong case for the Water, or process, level of experiencing with his morphological studies of plants and his scientific work (particularly optics).

Earth, Water, Air, and Fire

January 28, 2009
horse –> herd –> cybernetics

A friend of mine said:

“… Concerning self-correction, can we say that the system corrects itself toward a state of homeostasis (feedback—-correction—-goal) OR toward maintaining the integrity of the closed system? Is it o.k. to look at this in terms of homeostasis?

Reason why I’m asking is that I’ve been looking at the socialization behavior of horses in the herd, and how they “process” emotions. The processing looks very much like a feedback loop with a self-correcting mechanism – I see it as an infinity symbol. The interaction produces an action which takes the herd back to a state of “stability” or I call it homeostasis.

Anyway, this was a good experience for me because I read in that way – when I don’t get something I have a piece of paper and I draw to try to put the words into some visual.”

I said:

In the obvious case of the thermostat, there is a ‘goal’ – a temperature that is set by the second-order system (the human being). But now with horses you get something more obviously complexificated (i like coining ridiculous words). The horse is a system, the herd another, the environment another, and perhaps even another may be the system of “Horse” (i.e. ALL horses) thought about over a vast time period (that is, thinking about time from a second-order perspective – i think).

In this case, when we want to talk about homeostasis, what variables are tending towards sameness? If there are closed systems within closed systems within closed systems (as mitochondria are closed systems within each cell, which is another closed system…), then do we need to speak of a goal for each closed system? And is there only one goal per system (as in the thermostat), or can there be multiple goals which overlap from system to system? Or even multiple conflicting goals within a single system? Or is this not even possible from an cybernetic standpoint… or would it just be a double bind? Can you create a thermostat which simultaneously is tending towards TWO temperatures? How would it behave – oscillate in some frequency set by the speed of the feedback loops? Tend towards some intermediate value? Runaway?

Maybe symbiosis (which is an interesting concept to think about cybernetically) is the holding of multiple goals, one of which at least overlaps with another system? I’m just spitballing here.

Individual horse behavior —> herd qualities —> individual horse behavior (your infinity sign)

So if you can detect the processing of emotion in an individual horse, do you see also a higher-order processing of emotion that does NOT take place at the individual horse level but ONLY at the herd level? Is this a distinct process? Or is the herd’s processing so completely bound up with the individual horse’s processing that it is impossible to tell apart?

January 26, 2009
on demons

<insert context here – not me: YOU>

…but did we/they take off and burn the restraints of our minds? Did they/we realize that we cannot ‘heal’ the ‘patients’ when we don’t know that the patients are ourselves? That the demons aren’t simply ‘out there’ to be feared, nor are they ‘in here’ to be repressed or discarded, but that they are part and parcel of the space between the inner and outer – here to stay with us as we heal ourselves/others, so that they may be too?

January 23, 2009
sunrise

January 23, 2009
Ross Ashby is still smarter than you.

Ross Ashby says:

No system adapts to the changing: it can adapt only to what is constant.

(http://www.rossashby.info/aphorisms.html)

January 20, 2009