Re: [Philweb] Neoklassische Philosophie?

Lieber Karl, liebe Philweb-Teilnehmer, wie immer, fließen Eure Überlegungen, für die ich dankbar bin in mein Nachdenken ein, auch wenn ich es nicht im Text als fördernden Einfluss kennzeichne. Auf die von Dir, lieber Karl erwähnte Tatsachen-Definition von Wittgenstein greife ich dabei nicht zurück, denn eine Tatsache ist ja immer eine Feststellung, die durch jemanden getroffen wird, und es ist in meinen Augen geschickter, auf den beide, den Interpretierenden und das Interpretierte beinhaltenden und zusammenbringenden Prozess des Feststellens zu schauen als auf die Tatsachen selbst. In unserem bottom up Zugang gibt es auch kein absolutes Außen als für sich seienden Grund-Gegensatz, sondern immer ein „kleines“, jeweiliges Außen, von dem zunächst nur angenommen werden kann, dass es (noch) nicht dem eigenen Kohärieren angehört. In diesem jeweiligen Außen können dann weitere Kohärenzen durch beobachten, was sie zu wiederholt tun vermögen identifiziert werden. Ein allgemeines Außen wäre der als leer und neutral und primär bedeutungslos angenommene „Raum“, um den es unserem Ansatz zum Interaktionsraum als semantischen Raum ja nicht zu tun ist. Es gibt Parallelen im Begriff der actual occasions und in der Kritik an der Substanz-Ontologie bei Whitehead, sie werden im aktuellen Buch von Spyridon Koutroufinis (Organismus als Prozess, Begründung einer neuen Biophilosophie, Whitehead-Studien 4, Verlag Karl Alber, 2019 - 744 Seiten…..) sehr gut dargestellt. Hierbei zitiert er auf S. 441 auch Reiner Wiehl, der wiederum derjenige war, der unsere interdisziplinäre Gruppe zu sich in das philos. Seminar einlud. Die semantische Energie, von der wir sprechen taucht bei ihm (d. h. bei Whitehad) als anti-entropic agency auf, aber er sieht sie, anders als wir dann doch als der actual entity / actual occasion eigenen zielgerichteten Antrieb (causa finalis), während unser Trick ist, von Zielerreichen ohne eigenständige Zielgerichtetheit erst post festum zu sprechen. Wir müssen keinen Plan in die Kohärenzen hineinsehen, der sie angetrieben sein lässt, ein weiteres Kohärieren als Ziel zu erreichen. Aber hierzu mehr im folgenden Versuch - leider wieder gleich in Englisch geschrieben, wegen der bekannten Zeitnot. Für Kritik, wenn es überhaupt lesenswert erscheinen mag bin ich wie immer sehr dankbar - und nochmal: es ist „work in progress“, und es ist eher wahrscheinlich, dass es fehlerhaft ist als dass es zutrifft, aber anders kommt man nicht weiter :-) Viele Grüße, Thomas Introducing the concept of semantic energy Initial remarks Step by step, our interdisciplinary group has developed a concept of centricity allowing for a polycentric view. Whatever coheres during observation is seen as source of its further coherence. Looking into the inner program of such dynamic coherences, we came to distinguish coherence-related timing, spacing and interactional specifying. This goes along with creating and maintaining a coherence’s individual ‘perspective’, as well as with a coherence-related input processing. The coherences observed are conceptualised as having had an initial nascent phase. As long as they survive, they are seen to result from a balance of processes in favour of continuation. Seen as not static, but as continuously engaged in interaction with the coherence’s periphery, the permanent communicative interaction with the environment is observed to have achieved an intact and stable coherence inside-to-outside distinction. If these survival requirements are met, we can retrospectively call the corresponding processes, their timing, their communication and their energisation as having been effectively in favour of coherence and difference preservation. We call these aspects of a surviving coherence’s processing coherence-related, in this sense meaningful from the coherence’s point of view, and hence semantic. So, we call the timing semantic timing, and the distinct effect extension of the coherent processing its semantic space. Also, we call the energy energising the coherence-oriented processing semantic energy. Put together, we use a concept of transient energised semantic spaces, enacting semantic time and engaged in semantic interaction with random and non-random – that is, also semantic processes in the outside. In previous work, we have outlined the concept of polycentricity, semantic time and space in detail. Only the concept of semantic energy has still been to develop in both its basics and its detailed consequences. This is what is outlined in the following chapters. Semantic energy Semantic energy is an umbrella term conceptually combining all energetic aspects of processes that turned out to have contributed to flexible adaptation, effective communication, bonding and a successful directing towards a state of stable embedded coherence. As an umbrella term and an artificial terminatory composition, it is not a separate entity in itself, but in fact an integral, driving part of distinct processes that in retrospective turn out to be creating and iterating a composed coherence. The driving forces, seen from their result can be assumed as having achieved a goal, if the coherences established are voluntarily defined as a goal. Coherence creation and maintenance being at work cannot be assumed as intentionally anticipating what they later effectively accomplish. Coherence just happens, without an implicit or explicit goal. Only if a distinguishing, in so far selective force comes into play, like in living beings one may imagine such an implicit intentionality and goal-directedness. But even there, no aspect of the processes is able to perform this anticipation unless a separate instance is installed which is able to create an internal replica as correspondence of processes that get separately iterated in form of memory. This memory, then can be aligned with present processing to allow for comparison. Except in these instances of distinct memory-equipped coherences, goal and success-directed processing can only be constated afterwards, seen backwards from the goal achieved. Then we may state that there has been an effectively goal-oriented processing, equipped with a corresponding effectively goal-oriented energy. This directing, constructing, organizing, composing energy is addressed as something that can be logically distinguished from other aspects of the contributing processes. Retrospectively we may notice a formative power of also the energy aspect of the convergent, coherence-creating and maintaining processes. This power acts in more than an only mono-processual sequentially continuing, linear form to be mapped by a line combining present and future. It acts, instead, in form of effective content and containment creation. So, the figure to be used to map this force’s activity is a content together with the enclosing force and figure. The semantic energy retrospectively turns out to have embraced an inside co-created by this grip and embracement, just as it turns out to have established an inside-to-outside difference, and a form of an outside that is not empty and neutral, but a specified outside in being seen from a specific perspective, specifically addressed and hence co-created by the momentary inside. So, by virtue of the effectively goal-achieving processes and their energy, a reality is formed that is distinctive, qualified, special, emerging from a dynamically and interactionally qualifying volume-creating enclosing that at the same time also imprints a processual effect on the previously neutral, infinite, homogenous and now shaped and gradient-equipped halo surrounding the newly construed interactive volume. In this approach to semantic space, time and energy the participating processes form the first contributor (just as in Whitehead’s process ontology, here called elementary processes as actual occasions), and the resulting semantic vessels with their distinguished inside, inside-versus-outside distinguishing instance and their distinguished outside form the result. The result, just as the semantically separating, inside-forming ‘membranes’ has no absolute, but effective gradual limits and borders. Any more than gradual decontextualisation, any isolation that goes too far in logically completely cutting an observed inside from its environment ends up in a non-realistic phantasy of fully isolated elements, such as individual pieces or signs or numbers. To avoid fragmentation going too far, we at first have to hypostasise processes as smallest sub-elements, then processes as dynamised insides in continuous interaction with what is outside this inside constituted by them, then effective convergences forming composed insides and their continuous interaction with their outside and so on. This is an obviously endless progress towards a horizon that never can be reached and touched, and it is at the same time a picture of a vibrant, coherently and in this sense meaningfully interacting inside engaged in interaction with what is discriminated and addressed as the momentary inside’s relative outside. Note that the energy we talk about is a space-creating, and hence semantically spatial dynamic. In simply being dynamic, as an integral part of the processes going on it is temporal, also. Being temporal here means being semantically temporal, engaging in construction of coherence and coherences. Observing such coherences, we may state afterwards that the effective balance of destructive and constructive agencies must have been in favor of the latter. We may take this relative overweight of anteceding pro-coherence agency as a fact without construing an inherent interest of the implied agency and energy to achieve what has been achieved. The only consequence drawn from the observation of a balance of anti- and pro-coherence forces is that in principle they exist. A. N. Whitehead has called the pro-coherence forces a function of ‘Reason’, seen by him prospectively at work in nature. The approach suggested here is deliberately naïve in not assuming a distinct intrinsic anticipatory goal-directedness inherent in any pre-existing coherence, but only a range of options available at any moment, the ones pointing towards dissolution, decoherence and chaos, as far as seen from a coherence’s point of view, the other towards coherence construction and coherence preservation. The two options are not simply the opposite of each other, since what is called dissolution is a second-range form of existence, visible only before a background of perspective-providing coherence including the one or another coherence’s memory of what has been cohering in the past. In other terms, incoherence is always a derived, comparison-resulting and in so far relative phenomenon, whereas the coherence’s existence and point of view have an initiating axiomatic character. If the perspective is set axiomatically, what is beyond this perspective cannot be called inexistent in absolute terms but only in terms of the present perspective. The inexistence is a conditional hypothesis under the premisses of the perspective given. Again, the coherence’s existence is the initial statement, whereas incoherence is only derived on the basis of this coherence’s existence. This fundamental logical difference is levelled and ignored when both are put on the same descriptive level, such as by using symbols of the same class for both of them, such as numbers or words. This notion has consequences for our concept of semantic space, time and energy, since it weighs the nascent coherence logically different than its outskirts, namely in a mandatory sequence: inside first, outside defined from the inside’s point of view, hence only vaguely attributed in reference to this inside as momentary non-inside. Insofar semantic energy is also the energy of a statement, a commitment, a confession, that is, the energy empowering a statement, commitment, a confession. Creation of an energised semantic space and time and the uttering, as birth and as ‘throwing into existence’ in form of a corresponding call and statement happen simultaneously, in one and only one act. And it holds true: first the call, then a definition of the surrounding as momentarily silent, which means that inside and its outside do not share a simple co-presence, but that the inside is present, and the non-inside is a secondary and later arriving neighbour. This is the primacy of perspectiveness enacted in any approach to reality. It also means that gradual and later definitive non-coherence is understood in terms of a growing semantic distance. In case this distance is beyond some not exactly definable limit we, acting as a coherence and from its point of view cannot say anything of the far-away assumption, we can’t tell it anything, we just have to be quiet. Semantic energy then is to be understood as that agency which lowers the semantic distance to an axiomatic centre. Semantic energy hence is always an energy acting in mandatory relation to something, namely the semantic inside acting as semantic core and centre. In that, it has only one form, direction and task: concentration as effective convergence of growing process bundles. It is an embracing energy applied on the spheric semantic bundles’ ‘surface’ pressing inwardly, from outside to the inside. Without a centred polycentric view, one will not become aware of this concentrating type of energy. It escapes awareness because the primordial centricity of a call is ignored or neglected. The guiding force exerted by this aspect of the semantic processing can also be mapped in terms of the effectively concentrating aspect of ‘blind’, not directed, not shaping, not structuring and not orienting physical energy if, in retrospective, a formative processing, such as with rotating, compressing, tearing and widening forces enacted in producing pottery from clay has occurred. In case of pottery this unluckily never happens, and instead needs an additional agent and its intention to get realised. In monotheist religion this principal external agent is God, forming mankind from clay. Within the realm of ‘blind’ energy, the bonding features play the pivotal role as contributors to coherence-creating effects. But because bonding results from an antecedent semantic approximation and adaptation process, it does not follow the simple rules of unconditional instantaneous combination of two elements that are in itself seen as static, like two numbers. So, it is only the polycentric bottom-up view that allows to detect and conceptualise semantics in general, and semantic space, time, energy, communication and self-repetition in detail.