[humanmarkup-comment] RE: [categoricalAbstraction] Trends and balance

[paul <beadmaster@ontologystream.com>]

In reflections following Jimmy post's

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/categoricalAbstraction/message/37

I have often returned to the categorical distinction between a natural
system and a formal system - what is called the Rosen categorical
distinction in honor of Robert Rosen.

The failure to understand this distinction by some parts of science, and
most parts of information technology mirrors a human fault, or perhaps
better stated a set of human faults.  Viewpoint is one way to look at this
fault.  In America we have the great tradition of seeking diversity, but
this tradition is opposed by other fundamentalist traditions that
essentially say one are either an x or you are a non x.  The President has
used this distinction to avoid many moral issues regarding those causes of
terrorism that our society and our Middle East Policy is directly
responsible for.  We become, in my mind, un-American when we establish one
viewpoint as being the measure of all other viewpoints.

The great hope, I think, lies in the American Constitution and in the
treatment of viewpoint that runs through out this document and the other
founding documents.  The treatment of the minority view being one of the
most viewable treatment of the nature of viewpoint.

However, the Constitution has not always been sufficient to keep a reduction
to a single viewpoint from taking control of social judgment.  The treatment
of the American Indian and the Americans of African descent are primary
example. We still have a long ways to go - particularly in understanding the
damage to moral issues reflected in the domination of American Indian
beliefs (as if anyone still remembers Old Way).

The treatment of the People of Palestine, by our Middle East policy is a
current illustrative example.  On the positive side, the re-building of the
cultural institutions of Afghanistan is a current illustrative example of a
positive treatment of diversity and of maintaining the high moral ground.
Neither example is a pure example of what is wrong or what is right, but the
difference between what is happening in Palestine and what is happening in
Afghanistan should be well delineated.  Our culture's maturity is measured
by this delineation and by the success of some in acting as if there is no
difference, and in controling the debate by any means possible.  To not see
the difference is to lose the knowledge of how to solve the cultural
problems in Afghanistan, and to never even be in a position to address the
cultural problems of the People of Palestine.

Reductionism in the form of social enforcement of a dominate viewpoint has
many manifestations.  For example, the legal system can easily become the
enforcement of a viewpoint, unless the legal system is used in a full way to
protect the right to a variation in viewpoint.  Ownership of property also
settles a question from a certain viewpoint, in spite of the history where
one might see that this imposition of viewpoint has left part of the moral
reality unsettled.  Clearly this type of settlement is important and one has
a hard time seeing how an economic system can function without the absolute
imposition of ownership or land.  However, does this mean that all land must
be "owned".  What about shared religious sites?

The American Indian Old Way claims that is is against the wishes of the
Great Spirit to own the land - any land.  What is the legitamcy of this
viewpoint?  What about the patent mess?  Is the notion of ownership a bit
distorted?  Does this distortion lead to social injustice - such as what we
see in the modern treatment of innnovators by the investment community?  Can
these deep problems be traced to the Rosen Category Distinction and to
reductionism?

Ok, so what is the point in this reflection?  The point is that there is a
limitation to our society's quality of life. It is a limitation that is
imposed by fundamentalist impositions of reductionism and the improper
treatment of minority viewpoint.  As only one example, in many, our middle
east policy condemns the Western societies to a non-peaceful world because
one cultural viewpoint is supported over another cultural viewpoint.  One
viewpoint is given legitamacy and the right to distort the other viewpoint
as a means to preserve public support for the one and public opposition to
the other.

The tradition of diversity is not allowed to govern because of the
distortion of knowledge that the dominate viewpoint has been successful in
imposing within the political system in the United States.

The point has to do with our society's capacity to have and to use knowledge
technology.  Knowledge can not be reductionist in the extreme.  Knowledge
itself is not well reflected in most of the Western philosophical
traditions, as the KMCI (Knowledge Management Consortium Institute lead by
Joe Firestone) model of knowledge demonstrates.  There is no need to debate
this claim about the KMCI, as most who know about this group have one or the
other understanding of the practices of the KMCI and the type of Knowledge
Management that is advocated there.  There is a KMCI-virtual Yahoo forum,
one can go see for oneself.  Perhaps Dr. Firestone will characteristically
interspere text into this communication and one can make a judgement for
her/him self.  The debate, as conducted by their methods, is a process of
control where the benefit of the debate is for the controlers.  Knowledge is
not often found.  Distortion is used in the control.  Illusion is mostly the
result.

Knowledge must reflect both the "deep" structure of what is, and thus what
one might claim is often represented in a single set of self-coherent views;
and knowledge must reflect the "surface" structure of viewpoint.  Knowledge
is not reducable to something that is globally rational.  Maturity of mind
is required to see how the rational context shifts in the experienceof
knowledge.

Enter complexity.  Complexity is found in the two words "deep" and
"surface", since these two words have multiple correct, and contradictory,
meanings.  These two words, in this context; cannot be properly reduced to
one meaning.

In the paper on Event Detection and categorical Abstraction

http://www.ontologystream.com/cA/papers/EventDetection.htm

we have shown how a sign system (a semiotic system) can be co-evolved as if
it where a natural language.  The computer process finds invariance in data
structure through an instutmentation of sensors within the computing space.
This computing space is a formal system and thus is reducable to a finite
theory of kind.  The Rosen Category Distinction allows us to use
reductionism principles in the computing space to see the invariance in the
data.  However, the reduction is in syntax only.  There is no formal
semantics.  There are no rules, no artificial notions of deduction.

The semantics is let completely in the mind of the observer.  Knoweldge is
an experience, not a rational deduction.