On 10/07/07, Brent Meeker <meekerdb.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> I draw a complete blank when I read your use of the word "reflexive". What exactly do you mean? How would you distinguish reflexive from non-reflexive existence? Do numbers exist reflexively? Do somethiings exist non-reflexively? What is "self-reflexion"? What's the operational definition of reflexive?
Sorry, I'd hoped this might emerge more clearly from my dialogue with
Bruno, but I'm happy to clarify further. The notion arises from the
semantics of a particular 'theology', e.g. that of Plotinus' One. The
One represents uniqueness and independency: broadly, that which is not
subject to prior causation. This is 'existence' conceived as primary
presence-to-itself; it is consequently 'reflexive' in the sense of
turning in on itself. Here we are speaking of 'self' not of course in
the sense of a 'person', but in terms of primary 'self-relation'. The
'many' are conceived as emerging from the One by a process of what
might then be termed involution (borrowing from evolution). The One
stands here as the sole fundamentally ontic category; all subsequent
involution is epistemic. More poetically, but rather accurately, this
is how the One 'gets to know itself'.
In terms of these 'theological' premises, your questions might be
answered as follows:
1) How to distinguish reflexive from non-reflexive existence?
Anything whatsoever, if it is to exist in any sense other than the
abstract, must emerge as a category by a process of reflexive
involution from the One. Consequently all 'existents' could be said
to 'exist reflexively'. Non-reflexive existence then equates to
non-existence. One might then wonder: what is the point of the
qualification 'reflexively'? The point is that it is an implicit
qualification, and consequently we may inadvertently delete it - by
abstraction - when we postulate what may 'exist', especially in the
'all possible worlds' context of this list.
For example, ISTM that as soon as one explicitly conceives a
'B-Universe' - in contrast to Torgny's implicit assumption - as
having emerged by reflexive involution of the One, it becomes very
much harder to see how it could do so without 'getting to know itself'
in the process. IOW, the 'stuff' that seemed merely a peculiar
'optional extra' in its implicitly non-reflexive (i.e. in a rather
literal sense, abstracted) conceptual form, can be seen to integrate
organically with the 'physical specification' through the epistemic
self-relation of the One.
2) Do numbers exist reflexively?
An interesting question. Bruno, I think, might say that they do, or
at least that numbers and their relations can be used to mathematise
Plotinus' reflexive schema. I would say that to accept any such
mathematisation as a basis for our own existence, in some ineliminable
sense they must be held to exist reflexively. An intuitionist answer,
I guess, would be that they are abstractions of pre-mathematical
emergent categories of the One.
3) Do somethings exist non-reflexively?
No, a something gets to be a something solely in virtue of being a
product of a process of reflexive involution of the One.
4) What is "self-reflexion"?
Emphasis, I suppose. If reflexion is already self-relation, then
self-reflexion is merely an emphatic form of the same notion.
Redundant, perhaps.
5) What's the operational definition of reflexive?
IOW what would one do to discover if something exists reflexively? I
suppose in the end this is empiricism. If it kicks back, it's
participating in the web of reflexive involution. If it never kicks
back, it may be just because it isn't. So I would say that the
B-Universe as conceived by Torgny isn't specified reflexively: i.e.
its putative properties are characteristic of situations imagined in a
form abstracted from reflexivity. For this reason I would claim that
it could never kick back: i.e. have any consequences, make its
presence felt, survive the cut of Occam's razor, etc. I could of
course be wrong.
Does this help at all?
David
>
> David Nyman wrote:
> > On Jul 6, 2:56 pm, Bruno Marchal <marc....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
> >
> >> It
> >> is a unexpected (by me) discovery that quanta belongs to that sharable
> >> first person view (making the comp-QM a bit more psychological than
> >> some Many-Worlder would perhaps appreciate.
> >
> > Doesn't this strike you as perhaps consistent with what I've been
> > saying about self-relation, or reflexive existence? IOW, quanta - as
> > they appear to *us* (how else?) - exist reflexively. Comp, like any
> > 'TOE', is a "gods' eye view", and I've been trying to convince Torgny
> > that we shouldn't fool ourselves into mistaking such conceptions for
> > modes of existing. We may nonetheless ask - with great care - "what
> > might the consequences be if our situation were - in some (tricky)
> > sense - to look like this from a gods' eye view?" But this is a
> > (tricky, tricky) mode of enquiry, not a mode of existing.
> >
> > 'The One' is also a mode of enquiry (no less tricky, of course): it
> > seems to suggest that the mode of existing of both the qualia and the
> > quanta may be ineliminably reflexive: the splintering of a singular
> > process of self-reflexion. Self: because there is no other;
> > reflexion: because there is no other relation.
> >
> > David
>
> I draw a complete blank when I read your use of the word "reflexive". What exactly do you mean? How would you distinguish reflexive from non-reflexive existence? Do numbers exist reflexively? Do somethiings exist non-reflexively? What is "self-reflexion"? What's the operational definition of reflexive?
>
> Brent Meeker
>
> >
>
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Received on Tue Jul 10 2007 - 16:05:27 PDT