What meaning do you give to the word "boundary"? Time, location, etc.?
On Sat, Feb 18, 2023 at 10:09 AM Steve Smith <sasm...@swcp.com> wrote: > > > Great find. Thanks. I will read that. > > It was pretty damned dense for me, no more probably than OOO itself, and > being something of a critique the complexity is compounded for me a > little. I definitely was drawn in by the poetic title: "Extruding > Intentionality from the Metaphysical Flux"... which may explain some of the > topic of my other tangent to the Nick's Categories thread. > > > I'm a bit worried how you went from "trampled dirt" to a "pile of trampled > dirt". This is the target of DaveW's first question of composition and > structure. "Dirt" is a mass noun, whereas a "pile of dirt" is not. Mass > nouns like "data" are interesting, I think, for the very reason you're > targeting. They seem to me to be qualities, not objects. When EricC > mentioned "dirt at your feet", I implicitly *registered* a locality to the > quality "dirt". There's some intuitive, natural to those of us with feet, > boundary around "beneath your feet" versus "way the hell over there". So, > you might hedge on "pile" with "local". But as fuzzy as the boundary of a > pile is, the boundary around "local" is even fuzzier. > > "Body Stuff" amongst unequivocal *life stuff* also follows this > formulation which is why I don't disagree with your (Glen's) ideation > (probably mischaracterized as I often do) that "mental stuff" is "the stuff > of body stuff". Whether a pile (or a "patch"?) of dirt "does mental > stuff" is one question and (your) Glen's interesting alternative which > suggests that "a patch of soil" would be a different/more-interesting > question begs the question of "life itself?". My proverbial sand-pile cum > dog+earth-hump began "life as a sandpile" when I shoveled a "sandpile" from > the back of my flatbed trailer onto the spot of earth/soil. Said sand was > (by some measure) much more sand than soil (surely there was microbial life > on the surfaces of the sandgrain, if not quite a flourishing ecosystem of > microbiota?) Once it fell upon the adobe-earth of my side-yard it began > to become more-soil-like the very type of particles (silt, clay, > organic-bits) that had been screened/washed from it at the sand-gravel > yard were re-introduced (in kind, not in particular) by the wind and by my > dog (and other creatures) who liked to perch atop this tiny "mountain" > where she liked to play "king" (or whatever the heck she thought she was > doing). Within a year or so a nice patch of grass was growing up through > the "patch of sand" (formerly known as "pile of sand") due mostly perhaps > to the water-holding or aeration "mulching" of the sand? Today there sits > a nice 3-6' diameter patch of rough grass to mark where the "pile" once > was and amongst it's roots is unequivocally "soil" which at the beginning > of it's formation (first shovel of sand dropped there) it was hardly or > even patently-not-quite-really soil? A bit of the vitality of the dog > who once perched there continues on even though *her body* lies under > another pile of earth/rocks nearby becoming *soil itself*... with the > amount of "mental stuff" that went on when she threw herself down on top of > the pile-o-sand and looked around attentively seems to have diminished (or > become obscured to the sensibilities of *this* > warm-blooded-vertebrate-whose-primary-sense-is-focused-attention-in-the-optical-spectrum? > > I hate the word "affordances". But it's as good as any, I guess, as a sign > for that boundary-installing transition from quality to object. If I were > born without legs and spent my life in a wheelchair, I suspect that > boundary-installing registration of "dirt" to "dirt beneath your feet" > would be VERY different than it is now, to me with my legs. > > I'm glad you noted that you hate the word... I hate it too and perhaps > that is why I threw it in here (and in a few previous > thread-fragments)... I'm trying to process "boundary-installing > transition from quality to object" here... I do in fact trust that this > means something very specific to you and possibly to a whole community of > folks I don't know (of). I also hate "boundary" in it's several uses, but > following your style I acknowledge it might be "as good as any". What I > was trying to tease out when I introduced "affordance" is that we use the > the term as if it is a quality of the Subject when in fact it seems to be a > projection of some (perceived?) utility to the Object observing the > Subject. We say that the class of objects (or a particular instance of > that class) we call "chair" has a suite of affordances as if they are > properties of the chair when in fact they are aspirational utilities for > the object-considered-as-Subject (chair/chairs-in-general) which we > consider on it's behalf. We might situpon or standupon or > placeobjectsupon or blockdoorwayswith or throwthroughwindows this thing(ish > thing) we call "chair" but it seems specious/duplicitous to suggest that > the chair itself has those qualities/properties? > > > All this to emphasize, even more, that things like registration are *body* > stuff, not whatever is meant by "mental stuff", much the same way as, say, > self-organized criticality is body stuff, directly dependent on the shapes > and sizes of the particles. I'd expect that what it is like to be a tiny > chunk of quartz is different from what it is like to be a tiny chunk of > hematite. And compositionally, I'd expect a carbon molecule sitting inside > a diamond to *be* different from one sitting inside a lump of coal. > > > More good "food for thought". H and O atoms, when bound into H2O > molecules and even more interesting when variously arranged in Ice Crystals > or Water Vapor or Liquid Water or at the interface-boundary between liquid > water, either as part of the miniscus-boundary or en-exchange between > solid/liquid-phase are all the same yet different in fascinating ways. > And this doesn't even begin to address heavy-water, titrated water, > snow-flakes, IceN <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_X> (e.g. Vonnegut's > Ice9), water dimers, or more far-afield water-memory (ala homeopathy) and > hexagonal water, polywater (another pseudo-pseudoscience?). > > While "life itself" seems like a likely "floor" for projecting > mental-stuff onto body-stuff, we get confused (perhaps) somewhere down the > complexity numeration around virus particles (or at least the simplest > virii? or a fragment of mRNA?)... or maybe a nematode with 302 neurons or > a jellyfish with many more but much more distributed? > > What is the boundary between complex organism, adaptive organization, > metabolism, and thought? > > mumble, > > - Steve > -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ > -- Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D. Center for Emergent Diplomacy emergentdiplomacy.org Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA mobile: (303) 859-5609
-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
