A synopsis and discussion of "ontocubism"

[j_j]

@Andy

But isn’t this just a case of elevating a word above its ordinary language use and inadvertently considering it to have metaphysical import (W’s PI)? And if it is then shouldn’t we leave it alone in ordinary language (not that we have a choice)? Or is it more a case of “It ain’t what we don’t know that causes all the trouble… it’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so” (commonly attributed to Mark Twain)?

Fair question. I have zero objection to the use of “true” and “truth” in practical life. In practical terms, I am very “realistic.” I enact the usual strong beliefs.

This is very much only a theoretical issue. I expressed myself vividly because “force is clarity.” I am far indeed from feeling the fury of a crusader.

Do you know Wittgenstein’s radiator ? The one he designed for the house he built for his sister ? Art and tool at the same time.

My point is that I am an “industrial designer.” I just automatically like a machine with less parts that does the same thing as a machine with more parts.

Defining belief as “taking to be true” is “defining” something visceral and familiar in terms of something elusive and maybe basically “empty.”

It’s like defining a horse as a unicorn that lost its horn.

I know what a horse is. I have seen horses. I first want to see a unicorn before I define horses in terms of them.

Note that my anti-theory of truth doesn’t pretend to mirror the trans-empirical truth about “pure meaning essences.” I think you know that. But I want to emphasize that it’s only like a pointing to one path rather than other paths. “Hey guys, what if we tried to treat belief as a fundamental concept in our theoretical discourse ? That seems promising. It’s cleaner.”

It was largely inspired by my dissatisfaction with interpretations of pragmatism as a (merely) theory of truth. Later I crystallized that I objected to the taken-for-granted representationalism in this truth-reduction of pragmatism. Basically philosophers have largely taken the “assertions are pictures” metaphor for granted, even where the assertions are far indeed from empirical experience.

Pragmatism is also anti-logocentric. Inquiry is primarily visceral, though words are of course important.

In another thread, a poster said that one metaphysical interpretation of QM was "true or not. " This was presented as too obvious to need defending. So there is a Truthmaker out there even for explicitly metaphysical interpretations of QM. Apparently our wildest and most comprehensive assertions about reality “mirror or not” some non-verbal trans-empirical “true situation.”

The “goal” of philosophy is enacted by many as a “true picturing.” Not an liberating excavation of prejudice. Not a creation of many lenses, an expansion of personality. No. Just a monological slog toward God’s opinion.

Harmless, sure. But this kind of thing and mathematical platonism look to me as hobbling prejudices. My own foolosophy is not presented as a “truth.” But it is sincere. It’s how the world makes sense to me. It doesn’t mirror the world but try to point at its structures that are there for me that might be there for others. Of course I am primarily just paraphrasing, reactivating and continuing one inherited strategy among others. The words are pointing fingers, dependent on a cumulative effect.

[Andy]

@j_j

In another thread, a poster said that one metaphysical interpretation of QM was "true or not. " This was presented as too obvious to need defending. So there is a Truthmaker out there even for explicitly metaphysical interpretations of QM. Apparently our wildest and most comprehensive assertions about reality “mirror or not” some non-verbal trans-empirical “true situation.”

We’re in agreement about the nature of ‘truth’ – I’ve forgotten most of the occasions in my life when something I consider to be ‘true’ turned around and bit me in the bum (I just have the resultant conditioned response). I’m reading the Bitbol piece you linked to and I like this idea of a hermeneutic circle in science… reminds me of Wheeler’s self-excited circuit: the cosmos is constantly engaged in its own creation. Regarding the comment copied above, when I first came across the widespread view in theoretical physics that one should “shut up and calculate” I hated it. Whatever happened to human curiosity? But the older I get the more it seems to me that the search for some solid ground to stand on is, as somebody once put it, like looking for a black cat in a dark room. A room that has no cat in it. As Nagarjuna told us, even emptiness is empty.

[j_j]

@Andy

We’re in agreement about the nature of ‘truth’ – I’ve forgotten most of the occasions in my life when something I consider to be ‘true’ turned around and bit me in the bum (I just have the resultant conditioned response).

Right. We act on belief, enact belief. We call our current updated pain-taught belief “true.” But that’s what we did last time ! How did that work out ? Yet we can’t help and would be lost without strong enacted beliefs. Prejudice is a torch that also blinds.

@Andy

I’m reading the Bitbol piece you linked to and I like this idea of a hermeneutic circle in science… reminds me of Wheeler’s self-excited circuit: the cosmos is constantly engaged in its own creation.

I loved that part also. I see us as largely living in the significance of signs. The signs also “shine” on non-sign objects, change the way that they appear. The world is a “system.” Pull this string and that other thing moves.

@Andy

Regarding the comment copied above, when I first came across the widespread view in theoretical physics that one should “shut up and calculate” I hated it. Whatever happened to human curiosity?

I can relate of course as a former frustrated math student. The entire personality wants more than a technique. The entire personality wants an entire world that makes sense. Or some of us want that intensely.

I see philosophers as especially sensitive to rational norms and potent analogies like a composer might be especially sensitive to harmonies.

Less sensitive people don’t understand if they even notice the fuss. Which is OK. Lucky for them and yet there can be such joy in the pursuit.

@Andy

But the older I get the more it seems to me that the search for some solid ground to stand on is, as somebody once put it, like looking for a black cat in a dark room. A room that has no cat in it. As Nagarjuna told us, even emptiness is empty.

I love that last line. I’m sure I’ve said it elsewhere but I share it in this new context, because it’s a perfect analogue.

“Even emptiness is empty.” I found this same result in Ecclesiastes. You know the line:

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

But הֶבֶל is itself הֶבֶל — hebel is itself hebel. I don’t know Hebrew at all, but I looked it up. What is the original metaphor in Hebrew ?

The word is apparently already richly metaphorical and ambiguous in the original language, but it looks like “vapor” and “breath” are the concrete basis.

The word hebel is…breath ?

I searched for the solid bottom or basis of this breath, this word for the world entire in its essence — and found only vapor.

[Andy]

@Andy

Possibly related (but possibly not), I came across a drawing by Mach given here.

Douglas Harding – On Having No Head:

[Joshs]

@j_j

@Andy

Avenarius rejects both dogmatic empiricism (which fails to define “experience”) and Kantian criticism (which pre-judges its possibility). Empiriocriticism begins by accepting everything that an individual states as experience, without initial prejudice. Its goal is then to critically investigate this raw material to determine what constitutes universally valid experience. This “purely speculative” inquiry focuses on the universal form of knowledge, not its specific content

It’s interesting to contrast Avenarius with the enactivists. What they share with him is rejection of representationalism, a rejection of a private inner theater of the mind, a critique of subject-object dualism, an emphasis on organism-environment coupling, and the understanding of cognition as adaptive activity rather than passive reception.

But their differences are just as instructive . For Varela and Thompson, cognition is not fundamentally something occurring in the nervous system. Cognition is an activity of the whole organism in continuous coupling with its environment. Brain, body and environment form one integrated dynamical system. Furthermore, the aim is not simple homeostasis but dynamically self-modifying norms. Varela’s notion of autopoiesis describes organisms as systems that continuously generate and maintain themselves.Life is not simply equilibrium, disturbance and return to equilibrium.Rather, organisms actively generate new norms and new forms of interaction.

Most importantly, Avenarius begins with “pure experience”. The world initially appears as a neutral experiential field. By contrast, for the enactivists the organism doesn’t encounter neutral experience. The organism always encounters the world from a perspective shaped by its mode of life. Meaning is there from the beginning rather than emerging later.

[Andy]

@Joshs

Most importantly, Avenarius begins with “pure experience”. The world initially appears as a neutral experiential field. By contrast, for the enactivists the organism doesn’t encounter neutral experience. The organism always encounters the world from a perspective shaped by its mode of life. Meaning is there from the beginning rather than emerging later.

Do you think this difference might be accounted for by Avenarius taking a first-person phenomenalist approach (his “pure experience” being depicted by Mach in his drawing “View From the Left Eye”), whereas Varela and Thompson took a third-person approach (initially describing the organism as a machine)? I’m feeling the pull of dual aspect theory here.

[j_j]

@Andy

here

Another great picture.

Harding is “one of us” on this particular issue.

[j_j]

@Joshs

For Varela and Thompson, cognition is not fundamentally something occurring in the nervous system. Cognition is an activity of the whole organism in continuous coupling with its environment. Brain, body and environment form one integrated dynamical system.

A crucial part of my environment is other humans like me. I live largely in signs. The life of signs is “between us.”

I like “dyanamical system.” I’d say it’s poetic-dynamical. Experience is articulated in terms of historically sedimented significance, with the “habits” of the community as a meta-organism.

I like your wide use of “cognition.” In Gadamerian terms, existence is visceral “understanding.” This to me is the heart of pragmatism. Inquiry is a bleeding hand in the world.

It makes sense that Avenarius zooms in on “system C” of a sign-trading organism. Especially if the fundamental character of the empirical world has a “for-me-ness” relative to a particular organism within that world.

To stay radically empirical and consistent-ish, we seem to need an ontological perspectivism.

If there is no “external world” (because no “internal world”), no thinker offers a “peak behind the curtain.”

Unless the curtain is just our confession of the darkness of a future that is genuine. The old metaphor is spatial. Inside, outside. Reality is forever outside and apart from us. “Through a glass darkly.” The newish metaphor is temporal. Reality is still arriving.

Temporal theory understands itself to be the modification of “prejudice” as a style of meeting the future that also partially determines that future. We enact the visceral belief that our conduct “matters.” James is great on this. It’s hard to find a vision of the world plausible that paints our conduct as futile.

[j_j]

I can say “the same thing” in terms of “my life is a face of God” or "experience is the environment “for” of an organism.

In the first case, the tacit metaphor is “reality is God.” But most people aren’t weird philosophers who have read about Spinoza and talk like that. If I tell Average Joe that “each existence is a singular face of a poly-faced God,” then he might think I am crazy.

If I tell Mark that “consciousness does not exist,” then Mark — without more context — might think I deny the presence of the world for Mark, which Mark finds annoyingly absurd. But I am really trying to point precisely at this “presence of the world for Mark.” From my POV, this “presence of the world” is not a stuff “in” that world. It is the presence of whatever happens to be there for Mark.

If I say that the “being” of the world is not a thing in the world — not a thing at all — then I sound confused and mystical. A noun “points to” a thing. I can say weird stuff about “the ontological difference,” but the sign “being” means whatever it means. I can’t change the meaning of a word.

I agree that I can’t “just make” the sign do what I want it to do. I have to experiment with many signs. The signs I receive in return give me feedback.

But the invocation of the meaning of the world is part of the “prejudice” that I am trying to point at. The vague idea of a “true reality from no POV” looks entangled with the vague idea of the “true meaning of words in no one’s ear.”

The world that is perceptually there is “introjected.” This introjected “world for Mark” is a “movie” that mediates or translates an otherwise “external world.” Typically the scientific image that is given within the internal image is understood to somehow “punch through” the boundary between the internal and the external.

Because 4-D vectors reliably predict and control our 3-D-ish empirical world, the external world rather than the empirical world is a Frozen Eternal Diamond. Because “everything flows” in the empirical world, it’s hard to keep a straight face if you say that this world we live in is frozen.

Time is Plato’s Cave. The streaming ambiguous empirical world is Plato’s Cave.

“Poetry” is also Plato’s Cave. Most “physics-style” metaphysical dualism obsesses over math.

But in my experience those who hold this position don’t look very closely into math. Empirically math is there — at least — as marks and noises. But everything empirical and is Plato’s Cave. So it must be the “meaning” of the math that “articulates” or “mirrors” the truthmaking 4-D Crystal.

So the hard core “tough minded” scientism starts to look like its ideological opponent, idealism. “Reality is not experience.”

This is one way to summarize metaphysics from the POV of “positivism.”

I know that “positivism” signifies for some as “scientism.” That is only sort-of reasonable if science is understood empirically. Then the positivist is “guilty” of being extremely cautious about anything not available as experience. But this is merely cultural “scientism,” which is roughly equivalent to a secular scientific worldview.

Metaphysical scientism is anti-empirical, though perhaps its divine objects are presented in the tonality and style of the hard-boiled empiricism it has left behind.

To oversimplify the situation, we have the clash of two metaphysical positions that agree on the crucial point that experience is not reality. But they disagree strongly on what they choose for their symbols or images of this trans-empirical reality. One side chooses from physics and is often atheistic. The other side chooses from sacred traditions is often theistic.

Joe’s experience is not all of reality, not by a long shot. But Joe’s experience is not not reality.

[Joshs]

@Andy

Do you think this difference might be accounted for by Avenarius taking a first-person phenomenalist approach (his “pure experience” being depicted by Mach in his drawing “View From the Left Eye”), whereas Varela and Thompson took a third-person approach (initially describing the organism as a machine)? I’m feeling the pull of dual aspect theory here.

One of the central motivations behind Francisco Varela’s work was precisely to overcome the split between first-person and third-person accounts. In The Embodied Mind and Varela’s writings on neurophenomenology, he repeatedly argues that cognitive science cannot be based solely on objective, third-person descriptions of organisms and brains.

But that doesn’t mean it is strictly first personal in the sense of an ‘inner’ sphere of experience. The body is the site where both perspectives intersect by way of the organism’s embodied, embers activity within its world.

[Andy]

@Joshs

In The Embodied Mind and Varela’s writings on neurophenomenology, he repeatedly argues that cognitive science cannot be based solely on objective, third-person descriptions of organisms and brains.

I’m inclined to agree that we can’t just dismiss the first-person perspective – after all it’s the starting point.

@Joshs

But that doesn’t mean it is strictly first personal in the sense of an ‘inner’ sphere of experience. The body is the site where both perspectives intersect by way of the organism’s embodied, embers activity within its world.

Sounds poetic, but not very scientific.

[Joshs]

@Andy

Sounds poetic, but not very scientific

You made a 180 degree turn from ‘third-person machine’ to ‘unscientific poetry’. The question is , can there be a science which is neither based on third-person causal mechanism nor first-person vitalism or subjectivity, but combines the best of both? Maybe the more important question is how there could not be , given that even the most reductive and deterministic science is built from normative intersubjective interactions.

And as cultural niches, these norms are extensions of biological normativity. In this way we can ground the normative practices of science within biological processes which are not themselves ‘scientific’ according to traditional causal criteria of scientificity. But then such a view artificially restricts what it means to be scientific to a certain set of metaphysical presuppositions which brackets off human reason from natural causality (Davidson’s distinction between casual processes and human beliefs, Mcdowell’s distinction between space of causes and space of reasons) .

[Andy]

@Joshs

You made a 180 degree turn from ‘third-person machine’ to ‘unscientific poetry’.

Third-person description of machines is fine, but how does it accommodate the undeniable first-person starting point? Saying that they ‘intersect’ sounded like it needed some meat putting on the bones.

@Joshs

The question is , can there be a science which is neither based on third-person causal mechanism nor first-person vitalism or subjectivity, but combines the best of both? Maybe the more important question is how there could not be , given that even the most reductive and deterministic science is built from normative intersubjective interactions.

Now you’re talking my language.

@Joshs

And as cultural niches, these norms are extensions of biological normativity. In this way we can ground the normative practices of science within biological processes which are not themselves ‘scientific’ according to traditional causal criteria of scientificity.

Does this boil down to a claim that there’s something more to biology than science can encompass? I can see that science deliberately constrains its own field of investigation for good reasons, and that this alienates the first-person perspective. So it would be a bit lame to criticize science for failing to include what it deliberately excluded from the outset, but I’m still unsure how I should interpret this word ‘intersect.’

[Joshs]

@Andy

Does this boil down to a claim that there’s something more to biology than science can encompass? I can see that science deliberately constrains its own field of investigation for good reasons, and that this alienates the first-person perspective

Science is a conventionalization of philosophy . As you say, it picks the presuppositions it assumes as its starting point. But this doesn’t prevent it from evolving that starting point. Take behaviorism vs cognitivism in psychology as an example. Intervening variables were verboten for positivists like Skinner. And today a battle ensues within cognitive science between those who deem it necessary in the name of science to model psychic processes as internal representations of an external world and those who want to get rid of the internal-external split and representationalism in favor of a reciprocally causal systematics which brings together mind, body and world.

Dynamical systems modeling helps here, as long as it doesn’t slide back into representationalism. This wouldnt be a question of biology exceeding the grasp of science but of a battle between divergent psycho-biological models of living self-organization.

[Andy]

@Joshs

Science is a conventionalization of philosophy . As you say, it picks the presuppositions it assumes as its starting point. But this doesn’t prevent it from evolving that starting point.

Absolutely. You only have to take a look at the history of science back to the Ancient Greeks to see the truth in this.

@Joshs

Dynamical systems modeling helps here, as long as it doesn’t slide back into representationalism.

I would recognize this as modern science.

@Joshs

This wouldnt be a question of biology exceeding the grasp of science but of a battle between divergent psycho-biological models of living self-organization.

I’m still struggling to make sense of this term ‘intersect.’ It doesn’t matter to me whether we deem it science, philosophy, or metaphysics – I’m hunting for an interpretation.

[Joshs]

@Andy

I’m still struggling to make sense of this term ‘intersect.’ It doesn’t matter to me whether we deem it science, philosophy, or metaphysics – I’m hunting for an interpretation.

Let’s examine this quote from Merleau-Ponty. it exemplifies the enactivist thinking on the relation between subject and world:

…[t]he world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject who is nothing but a project of the world; and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world that it itself projects.” (Phenomenology of Perception)

Perhaps you would prefer another word besides ‘intersect’ to depict this reciprocal dependence between the inner and the outer, the first and third personal ( I like to use the word ‘alchemy’). The point is that the organism’s autonomy is produced through sensory-motor coupling with its environment.

As Eugene Gendlin puts it:

The organism is environmental
interaction, not a separate structure and then separately also in interaction with the environment. The living body inter-acts with environmental events which thereby become part of the dynamic organization we call “organism”. The integration of the organism lies in this ongoing functioning. The organism remains integrated only as the functioning continues. Its integration is the dynamic organization of this functioning. Thus, from the organismic point of view, integration must be defined as a function of the ongoing process.

This implies that third-person science is always required to be interpreted from a first-person perspective, but a first-person perspective which is already a variation of, and embedded in, social norms.

[Corvus]

@j_j

Of course I invite criticism too. What do you object to ? What would you tweak ? What rival positions do you prefer ?

The most critical problem for ontocubism seems to be cubism. Cubism sees the world in 2 dimensional perspectives with heavy subjective abstraction.

It is not really an accurate way of seeing or understanding the world. Cubists also seem to like to separate the objects they see into parts, just like some science and QM folks do. They cannot be seeing the whole picture. They cannot be able to tell what the true reality is by doing that.

One cannot tell how elephants looks and what elephants are by blindfolded and touching the legs of an elephant, or rearranging and randomly putting down all the parts of the body in 2 dimensional figures in a drawing.

[Andy]

@Joshs

This implies that third-person science is always required to be interpreted from a first-person perspective, but a first-person perspective which is already a variation of, and embedded in, social norms.

I tried to see if there was common ground between our perspectives and came up with a short AI-generated overivew. Then I tried to make the overview public so I don’t have to copy AI-generated content onto the forum possibly in violation of guidelines. I don’t know if this will work but for what it’s worth, and if it piques your interest, you should be able to find it here.

[Joshs]

Ask your a.i. ( I prefer chatgpt for these questions) how Evan Thompson or Merleau-Ponty would push back against Wheeler’s model. That might pinpoint where perhaps you and I diverge.

[j_j]

@Corvus

The most critical problem for ontocubism seems to be cubism. Cubism sees the world in 2 dimensional perspectives with heavy subjective abstraction.

Thanks for the feedback !

Keep in mind that “ontocubism” is just one of many unimportant short-hand labels. The cubist movement in painting offers a nice analogy, but that’s all.

The more “technically correct” expression of the thesis goes like this : a thing is the temporal unity of its “moments.”

Every thing “hides behind itself.” The manifestation of one “moment” of the thing in a fleeting specific quality is the not-manifestation of all of the other “moments” of one and the same thing.

Many people can sing the same song at different times and places with different voices. The song is not more than these singings, but it is not reducible to any single singing.

Specification is exclusion. The table seen from the top is not the table seen from the side. But in both cases it is the same table that is there. This is how “simple and boring” the point(ing) is.

It’s doesn’t matter if we consider optical quality, sonic quality, olfactory quality, tangible quality, emotional quality, etc.

Subjectivity is “there” as the exclusive specific quality of the thing as it is here and now ( and therefore also not-here and not-now.)

Experience is a specific exclusive showing of the world that is also a hiding. If there are things, then they are here only by also not-being here.