The Chinese Challenge :: 中国挑战

Luhmann’s secret diamonds

2009-06-11T14:19:00.000-07:00

New entries for the Zettelkasten

FULL TEXT
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Luhmanns Diamonds/Luhmanns Diamonds.pdf
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Luhmanns Diamonds/Luhmanns Diamonds.html

Abstract

A kind of a similarity between Luhmann’s concepts of sign, system, difference and re-entry and the main figures of diamond theory is observed.

1.2. Interpretation

It seems to be more fruitful today to thematize and formalize Luhmann’s distinctions with the help of diamond theory instead of the Calculus of Indication of George Spencer Brown.

A key notion in Niklas Zettelkasten, obviously, is self-reference.
The other crucial notion is the self-referential concept of difference.

With that all kind of connections to logical, methodological and epistemological considerations are provoked. A strange connection to Spencer-Brown was inaugurated, mainly by the influence of Heinz von Foerster. The re-entry figure became a machina creativa, albeit nobody had a training in formal languages at all.

Difference and relation; différance
But Luhmann’s work is about social theories and not about logic. Neither is Luhmann’s theory of social systems a semiotic or semiological theory. This point ios not yet well understood. Semiotics, but the french “sémiologie” too, are based on relations, triadic for semiotics and dyadic for semiology. But Luhmann’s concept of a self-referential and “therefore”, paradoxical concept of difference isn’t based on relations but on difference (Unterscheidung). Relations are presupposing difference, and are thus secondary to the paradox concept of difference. Relations are logical and not paradoxical.

Derrida has given strong deconstruction of the semiological and semiotic sign concept and its relational foundations in logocentrism. With his radicalized interpretation of de Saussure’s semiology, he transformed the concept of difference to the paradoxical non-concept of différance. The difference of the difference, the différance, is not in a relationship to relations.

Similar, Gotthard Gunther’s non-concept of proemial relationship.

Hence, Luhmann’s insistence on self-reference might well be reformulated in different ways. One, which I proposed for many years, is interpreting self-reference and its circularity in the framework of a polycontextural understanding of chiasms, i.e., technically, as proemial relationships.

Now, after this chiastic theory got some maturity, albeit not much recognition, it is time to introduce the diamond approach to difference and circularity of system and environment . Diamond strategies are a further radicalization of the earlier approach of polycontextural chiasm.

Also Luhmann’s work is not well known in the Anglo-Saxon world, it isn’t a wrong feeling to observe that also the themes and topics, and their highly reflected treatment by Luhmann, has no real existence in the world-leading sociological literature of the super-power theoreticians.

2. Supplementing the Zettelkasten

It doesn’t seem too risky to risk an interpretation of Luhmann’s theoretizations out-side or beyond second-order cybernetic figures and metaphors.
In other words, is there a strict necessity to understand Luhmann’s adventure in terms of his entries of his own Zettelkasten?
Is it possible to ‘re-construct’ his constructivism and re-enter into it without its terminology and jargon of difference, distinctions, re-entry and self-referentiality?
Luhmann’s theory is self-referential, thus it could refer to itself in different terminological modi, and still keeping its adventures strategies and networks of constructing a de/constructive theory of social systems alive.

Hence, I will take the risk to supplement the Zettelkasten by smuggeling some non-contents of diamond boxes into this, now electronic, Zettelkasten.

By re-reading the passage with its introduction of the difference of system and environment, I think that I’m observing, or as I prefere to say, hallucinating some features not yet been recognized and mentioned, neither explicitly by Luhmann nor by his followers.

Self-referentiality without referentiality?

The rhetoric figures of Luhmann’s texts are not necessarily determined by the frameworks of the used technical weaponry. The cage of the jargon is not necessarily incarcerating the dynamics of the gesture.

Technically, I try to understand Luhmann’s theory of social systems from the viewpoint of polycontextural and diamond systems. Hence, I try to avoid to go into the litany of second-order cybernetics, systems theory and Spencer-Brown’s Calculus of Indication and its extensions.
Even more technically, my interpretation of Luhmann’s gestures with the introduction of his rhetoric figures is due to a morphogrammatic subversion, abandoning any jargon and terminological content, as crucial as it might be, and conceiving the dynamics of the pattern, only.

After this new diamond approach is introduced, experienced and further developed, a renewed lecture of Luhmann’s work as involved with the above mentioned second-order trends, might happen again.

The term “diamond” refers to itself, only. There is no reference to exposed marketing labels necessary.

2.2. Uncovering Luhmann’s diamonds

Statement
"When a communication constitutes a previous communication as a communication, it simultaneously distinguishes it from all those other things in the world that are not communication. In this sense, all operations of autopoietic systems always constitute the difference between the system and its environment

How can this happen? If an operation of an autopoietic systems is producing by its action, i.e. operation, both, the intended operation and at the same time, the operation of distinguishing the system of the first operation from its environment, then it “constitute[s] the dfference between the system and its environment”. How is an autopoietic operation simultaneously operating in its domain (system) and producing an environment of the domain? Or in other words, how is an operation operating that it is able to operate and thereby by such operation constituting (operating) its own environment?

The first answer, which might be given by Luhmann is the hint to Spencer Brown’s Calculus of Indication: “Draw a distinction!” With this distinction, the ‘world’ is ‘divided’, i.e. ‘distinguished’ into two parts, the inside and the outside of the ‘world’ or ‘space’.
But what is given by the CI? Two ‘equations'.
In this formulation, no world appears. The world or space is presuposed and realized by a sheet of paper or another medium of inscription. This might be interpreted cognitively by a user of the CI. And this interpretation will become a meta-theoretical environment of the calculus. But nevertheless no part of the calculus in question.

Again, "When a communication constitutes a previous communication as a communication, it simultaneously distinguishes it from all those other thing in the world that are not communication.”

Interpretation
"When a communication constitutes a previous communication as a communication"
This is involving several procedures:
1. "communication constitutes a previous communication", this might be naturally understood as a composition of two communications.
2. "as a communication” means, that the composition has to be realized as a composition of communications and nothing else. But this condition is exactly what is called the ‘matching conditions for compositions'.
4. With this formulation we get a clue to understand what could be meant by the consequence: “it simultaneously distinguishes it from all those other thing in the world that are not communication."
This consequence of the composition of communications is following consecutively the ‘assumption' of the operation of composition albeit it states its simultaneity.

Diamondization
Luhmann’s communicational statement, the ‘axiom’ of communication, interpreted as a categorical composition of communications offers a natural introduction of the otherness of communication, i.e. the simultaneous environment of communication by the saltatorical hetero-morphisms.
It needs two communications to realize communication and its environment as the singular otherness of communication. This asymmetry is directly covered by the saltatories od diamond theory, which are complementary to the categories of communication.

Because of the operativity of the diamond interpretation of Luhmann’s conception of communication, communication might now be studied operatively on all levels of complexity and complication necessary, together with their interplay.

This diamond interpretation is not reducible to the indicational calculus and its use for autopoietic and communicational systems.

Again, what are the conditions for communication? Communications have to be “anschlussfähig”, i.e. they have to fulfil the conditions of connectivity.
In category and diamond theory, such conditions are exactly the matching conditions of composition.

Now, there are two possibilities opened up.
One insists that the conditions of the possibility of something are not identical with such a conditional something.
The other position could take a highly formalistic turn towards self-referentiality and postulate that there is no logical difference between the conditions of something and such a something.
Without doubt, the latter position leads quite directly to logical paradoxes. But who cares?
Why should we use logic? And which logic anyway?
It also could be mentioned that the comparison itself is too much restricted by logic and alternativity.

The first position sounds harmless if we take the statement in a hierarchical way, i.e. if we postulate a sequential order between the conditions and the entity. But why should we accept this decision as the only working possibility?
The diamond approach, obviously is postulating a simultaneity of both thematizations, the conditions of the possibility and the characteristics of the entity.

It might be a question of taste which of both positions has to be considered as more crazy: the ultra-formalistic or the diamond approach.

Re-entry and in-sourcing
``To cope with these consequences of a re-entry of the internal/external difference in itself, the system needs and constructs time.” (Luhmann)

Again, in-sourcing:
"The idea of in-sourcing the matching conditions into the definition of diamonds seems to be in correspondence with the two main postulates of "Chinese Ontology", i.e., the permanent change of things and the finiteness or closeness of situations. That is, diamonds should be designed as structural explications of the happenstance of compositions and not as a succession of events (morphisms)."

The figure of re-entry tries to correspond to the device to include “the internal/external difference in itself”. This happens in “consequences” and needs/constructs time.
Hence, the idea of a simultaneous realization of the difference of system and its environment gets lost in the infinit delirium of self-reference.

In-sourcing the matching conditions of composition is a finite and simultaneous constellation of categories and saltatories. It is the interplay of both, categories and saltatories of a diamond constellation, which is realizing the figure of re-entry in a finit and differential manner.
Both strategies, the re-entry and the in-sourcing, seems to correspond to a similar gesture.

FULL TEXT
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Luhmanns Diamonds/Luhmanns Diamonds.pdf
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Luhmanns Diamonds/Luhmanns Diamonds.html

The Chinese Challenge-华文?谁怕谁!

2009-03-29T06:54:00.000-07:00

推广华语理事会推出崭新的活动《华文?谁怕谁!》，让华族新加坡人和永久居民，通过有趣的问答游戏，感受中华文化的博大精深，深化对华文华语的认识，并进一步提升华语掌握能力。

The Chinese Challenge

"The Promote Mandarin Council has launched an exciting new initiative, The Chinese Challenge, to encourage Singaporeans and Permanent Residents to enjoy and improve their Mandarin and deepen their knowledge of Chinese culture through experiencing the finest in Chinese culture and language."

http://www.thechinesechallenge.sg/

"If we can raise the level of Chinese language and appreciation of Chinese culture, it could have an indirect impact on our economy in the future,' he said."

http://www.straitstimes.com/

The Chinese Challenge

中国挑战

The Chinese Challenge: Hallucinations for Other Futures

What can we learn from China that China is not teaching us?

It is the paradigm of writing on which main cultures are depending. Their kind of rationality, their efficiency of technology, the way they organize society and communication, arts and sciences, all are not to separate from their paradigm of writing. How people are involved in writing and scriptural practice is enabling their possibility of thinking and living. Main cultures always depend on their paradigm of writing. Writing in general is the most abstract mechanism and technology of cultural, political and technological formations.

中国对西方的挑战不是经济的、也不是政治的或者军事的；苏醒的技术中国和经济中国这个事件并不构成对西方的所谓的"大挑战"，真正的挑战是重新发现她的文字系统，并设计出新的理性形式系统，就像创造新的数学和新的编程语言一样；是面对一个崛起的中国我们是否做好了充分的准备。

The Chinese Challenge to the West is not economical, political or military. It is not the event of a re-awakening economic and technological China which is the Grand Challenge to the West but the possible re-discovery of the operationality of its writing system for the design of new rational
formal systems, like new mathematics and new programming languages

http://www.thinkartlab.com/CCR/2006_08_01_rudys-chinese-challenge_archive.htm

Text in Chinese

http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/The Chinese Challenge-CN.pdf

Video Chinese&English

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCNcFmPl-9E

Xanadu's textems

2009-02-21T06:40:00.000-08:00

Diamond theoretical reflections on hypertextuality

FULL TEXT
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/lola/Xanadu-textemes/Xanadu-textemes.pdf

Abstract
Xanadu is still not yet realized. Nevertheless, it is appropriate, not only to understand its principles and its radical difference to established Web hypertext and multimedia, but to try to think and design even more advanced concepts of non-traditional interactions. One interesting extension of identity-oriented thematizations is opened up by polycontextural, kenogrammatic and diamond approaches to text theory; proposed recently as textems or textemes. Textemes are based on the interplay of anchored semiotic diamonds and are delivering necessary environments for transclusions. Transclusions and transjunctions are modeled additionally in a polycontextural setting. The characteristics of ‘electronic’ text in contrast to ‘physical’ paper texts are emphasized.

1.1. Hyper-textuality

Since some decades, everybody knows Xanadu and nearly nobody ever has seen it working.

Most people think of it as a special kind of a hypertext project with two-way links and connected with projects like Hypercard. Hence, the focus is on the machinery of links.

Personally I had a similar perception and therefore wasn’t specially interested in it.
But there is a very crucial distinction at place which makes a profound difference to all kind of linking systems. It is Nelson’s insistence on the difference of ‘physical’ and ‘electronic’ documents. At the first glance this seems to be obvious and trivial too, but it isn’t at all.

There is a lot of postmodern writing about the virtuality and simulacrum of electronic media. Nevertheless I couldn’t find any conceptually and technically useful elaborations.

With such a change, from the ‘physical to the ‘electronic’ , in the ontological and epistemological status of documents and texts, the whole topic of links (transclusions, deep links, content links, etc.) appears as a ‘natural’ consequence of the new understanding of text ('electronic’., digital’, ‘virtual').

1.1.1 Ted Nelson’s Xanadu

"To Project Xanadu, that means enacting two types of connection: profuse and unbreakable *deep links* to embody the arbitrary connections that may be made by many authors throughout the world (content links); and *a system of visible, principled re-use*, showing the origins and context of quotations, excerpts and anthologized materials, and content transiting between versions (transclusions).

This may be simplified to: connections between things which are *different*, and connections between things which are *the same*. They must be implemented differently and orthogonally, in order that linked materials may be transcluded and vice versa. This double structure of abstracted literary connection -- *content links* and *transclusion* -- constitute xanalogical structure."

Transclusion
"Transclusion is what quotation, copying and cross-referencing merely attempt: they are ways that people have had to *imitate* transclusion, which is the true abstract relationship that paper cannot show. Transclusions are not copies and they are not instances, but *the same thing knowably and visibly in more than once place*. This is a simple point which is remarkably difficult to get across. While copies and cross-reference are workarounds in place of transclusion, aliases and caches are *forms* of transclusion."

Text is not simply text
"Nelson always meant hypermedia when he said hypertext, it's one of the things that people get wrong about Nelson. They think that they've invented hypermedia and he only invented hypertext. He meant 'text' in the sense of corpus, not text in the sense of characters. I know this for a fact because we've talked about it many times (van Dam 1999, interview)."

Hypertextuality in the sense of the Web and its WEB-0.X-mythology, is restricted to a unidirectional exchange of signs as data without environments. Web links are not only uni-directional by definition but they have only two logical states: broken/unbroken.

It would by great to enjoy a more dynamic bi-directional Web connectivity in the sense of transclusions (Ted Nelson). But Xanadu links are postulated as UNBREAKABLE. Does it matter if they are one- or two-way links if they are not qualified to perish? http://www.xanadu.com/xuTheModel/

What’s an ‘electronic’ text?

It isn’t easy to characterize properly ‘electronic’ or ‘digital’ texts and documents in the sense of Nelson’s intentions.

One hint is given by the distinction of “same” and “different” instead of ‘equal’ and ‘unequal’.

” ... connections between things which are *different*, and connections between things which are *the same*."

A further hint to the different epistemological character of ‘electronic’ texts is given by the necessity of ‘orthogonal’ structures.
"They must be implemented differently and orthogonally, in order that linked materials may be transcluded and vice versa.”

Furthermore, ‘electronic’ texts are charactericed by a complementarity of polar distinctions, i.e. by a double structure of ‘content links’ and ‘transclusions’.
"This double structure of abstracted literary connection -- *content links* and *transclusion* -- constitute xanalogical structure."

Some more distinctions might help to grasp the specific character of ‘electronic’ texts.

1. The mainstream understanding of text is still dominated by the sentence-model. A text is a composition of sentences (phrases, statements, etc.). A sentence is ideally a well-formed statement with a clear meaning.

2. Hypertext in the mainstream understanding is a text of a text. As a meta-level, a markup language is constructed to link textual elements of the primary text.

"In a classical node-link hypertext, a graph can be constructed on the set of nodes where each edge is identified with a link and structure discussions typically take place with respect to this graph.” (Neumuller, p.89)

”The Web link is in essence little more than a goto or a jump instruction to the Web browser to retrieve and display a new document.” (ibd., p. 149)

3. And to give the whole thing some meaning, a markup language of a markup language of the ordinary text is introduced. This is the concept of text in an ontology-based Semantic Web.

4. Nelson’s Docuverse, "deep electronic literature”, virtual documents

”...transclusions are hard to formalize in graph theory: are they nodes themselves? If they are, they would transform trees into directed graphs. I have included them in this section, as they seem to mark a breakpoint of graph theory.” (ibd., p.90)

The same at different places, without ‘physical’ representation by copy-and-paste.

"Transclusions are not copies and they are not instances, but ‘the same thing knowably and visibly in more than one place’.” (Nelson)

Key Concepts
• Parallel Documents
• The Big three : Transpointing, Transclusion and Transcopyright.
• Transpublishing.

Hence a further aspect of the epistemology of ‘electronic’ texts is the fact that they have to be placed, that they have to take place in a textual space. There is no such thing in classical text theory as a textual place or locus. This shouldn’t be confused with the triviality that in classical text theory all kinds of topologies, hodologies and super-graphs might be used to explain, model and formalize classical texts as complex objects.

FULL TEXT
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/lola/Xanadu-textemes/Xanadu-textemes.pdf

Diamond Text Theory

2009-02-12T08:47:00.000-08:00

From signs to textems

FULL TEXT
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Textems/Textems.pdf

"From signs to textems” is sketching the basic constituents for an intertextual theory of texts, based on the diamond concepts of bi-signs and textems.
Applications to inter/intra/trans- and hypertextuality (Xanadu) are sketched.
 Some remarks about the relationship between semiotics and Gunther’s place-valued logic in the 70s are added.

1.2 Inter/intra/trans- and hyper-textuality

1.2.1 Signs and environments

Text theory seems to be fundamental for any media and cultural theory. 

But classical, modern and post-modern studies of intertextuality in general is restricted mainly to a semantic or pragmatic level, concerning the intertextuality of meaning as an interaction of different texts, discourses and stratagemes in translation, interpretation or reconstruction of what happened anyway.  

Poetic, evocative, propagandistic and prophetic modi, transformed by post-scientific writing, are taboo to the enlightened elite.  

The basic semiotic system of whatever color is presupposed by such highly propagandistic and delirious and post-technological SiFI-fantasy and are not by themselves involved into the interaction of intertextuality in general. 

It is understood that there is no semiotic theory of sign systems which is reflecting inner and outer environments of basic signs as a constitutive part of the definition of signs.  

The literate reader of postmodern education will know very well that he will fail to answer a single question about how his or hers pragmatistic, interactive, discourse driven, multimedial, deconstructivist, quantum-inspired dialogism (and much more) is working.   

The laconism to write of/on signs and their paradoxical subversions is not generating jobs.  

Therefore, a first step to a general theory of interactional semiotics on the base of the new concept of textems, i.e. bi-sign systems or anchored diamonds, consisting of the semiotic intra-kernel and the semiotic internal/external environments, and its interplay, is proposed.

1.4.4 Conceptual graph for two bi-signs building a textem

A textem consist of two diamondized anchord signs, i.e. bi-signs, inter-playing together by their mediated external environments.

Hence, a textem is an interplay of two bi-signs.
A bi-sign is a diamondized anchord sign, i.e. a sign with intrinsic environments and its anchors.   

This is a kind of botton up introduction. Because we know signs and have not yet experienced textems, this way of building up textems is legitimate.

But nevertheless, it works only because we know how to construct textems out of signs which are not able to offer any of the principles of textems, which are needed to realize such a construction, like their chiastic interplay between the environments of signs, the environments of signs and the anchoring of signs.  

As we no well enough, signs lack environments, there is no chance to construct out of signs inn sign-theoretical sense a semiotic environment of the sign conception.

And obviously, there is no such mechanism as a chiasm in the sense of proemiality for signs. Hence, neither environments, internal and external, nor interactions between signs based on their environments are conceivable.  

Therefore, as a consequence, there is no such thing as a reduction mechanism for textems, which is reducing without loss, textems to signs.  On the other hand, after the intuition of textems is introduced, formalized and implemented, reductions are naturally available.   

Hence: 
A textem is reducible to its interacting bi-signs by excluding its chiastic interactivity.  A semiotic diamond is a bi-sign, de-rooted from its anchor. 
A single bi-sign is disconnected from its neighbor bi-sign, hence it is a bi-sign without interaction but realizing an anchored semiotic diamond with its isolated, and hence restricted, environment.  
A sign is a semiotic diamond, depraved from its environment. 

FULL TEXT
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Textems/Textems.pdf

Category Glue II

2009-01-23T10:24:00.000-08:00

FULL TEXT
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/lola/Category Glue II/Category Glue II.html

Part II:
How to get rid of glue? From gluing to jumping. A new abstraction, the as-abstraction, and a subversion, the morpho-abstraction, has to be risked to avoid the complicity of category theory with the unavoidable exploitation of (conceptual) resources by the Western approach to interaction and communication in computer science.

To overcome the limitations of the category “glue”, contexturalization and mediation in a chiastic and diamond framework has to be elaborated and achieved to create chances to surpass and subvert such cultural and technological limitations.

http://cartoonbox.slate.com/hottopic/?image=8&topicid=114

Content

Category Glue II

1. Diamond theory of interactivity

1.1. Buffering super glue

1.1.1. Gluing information

1.1.2. Circularity of buffering information

1.2. Streching super glue

1.2.1. Horizontally: Meta-pattern

1.2.2. Pfalzgraf’s Fibered Glue

1.2.3. What are the aims of glued interactions?

1.3. Inhaling glue

2. Getting rid of glue

2.1. Interfaces

2.1.1. Interfaces as mutual representation

2.1.2. Polycontextural approach

2.2. Diamond modeling

2.2.1. General strategies

2.2.2. Categorical composition

2.2.3. Dissemination

2.2.4. Chiasm

2.2.5. Diamondization

2.3. Sketch of formal chiastic and diamond modeling

2.4. Costs and resources

2.4.1. Conceptual analysis

2.4.2. Concept tree analysis

The Logic of the Bailout Strategy

2009-01-03T04:49:00.000-08:00

The end of capitalism or the end of the state?

FULL TEXT:
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Bailout Strategies/Bailout Strategies.html
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Bailout Strategies/Bailout Strategies.pdf

2. Bailout logic

"In economics, a bailout is an act of loaning or giving capital to a failing business in order to save it from bankruptcy, insolvency, or total liquidation and ruin.”²

Detailed material and description about the complex aspects of the USA bailout is summarized at Emergency_Economic_Stabilization_Act_of_2008.³ Or watch the video:Why Wont The Bail Out Work? ⁴

There are funny discussions about the nature, probably it is better to call it, the ideology and stratagemes, of what’s going on today in the economic world.

The funniest chapter is the emergence of an ever growing debate about the transformation of the relationship between capital, economy, market and state, governments, administrations, bureaucracy.

Things are not as funny as they could be. The biggest economic crises since the last big crash is producing serious global poverty and will become a good reason for further wars.

What’s annoying me is that the same stupidity of our ruler and their academic adviser is going on without any interruption or critical reflection on what happened and is still happening.
The same politicians and Nobel Prize Winners are on the floor.

Do we have to enter this debate?

There is no need to get messed up about their opinions.
It seems to be good enough to think about the most simple structure of the whole manoeuvre to understand its logic and strategy.

http://cartoonbox.slate.com/hottopic/?image=23&topicid=279

The state, of whatever governmental form, from the Swiss democracy to Gordon Brown’s British parliament, the USA to China, the state is asked for or is offering a bail-out of companies, corporations, institutions which are running into bankruptcy.

The bail-out is paid by so called tax payers money. Hence, the state will take over such companies to some degree in ownership and regulations. It is seen as a reversal of the process of privatization. Some, are happy to interpret it as the symptoms of the end of capitalism.

There are others, not many, for good reasons, which are more cynical and are understanding the bail-out manoeuvre of the state as a coup of the capital to overtake the state with its tax payer's money and its power of regulation.

This position in the debate is still hidden in the background. It would be too dangerous to defend such a complementary position explicitly and with the proper intensity.

It is said that the state will take shares of the companies and will use more control over them. Does it matter? There will be bankers and managers from the side of the capital which will enter the save heaven of governmental offices to do the job. Hence, the capitalist bankers are becoming administrators and the governmental administrators are becoming bankers.

The governmental bankers, which had been in charge to control the capitalist banks, are as much involved in the crash as their colleagues from the so called private sector.

Both positions of the debate, surely, are demanding for themselves unique truth of their interpretations. Only debaters with some secured positions are liberal or tolerant enough to accept, at least, the existence and relative reasonability of the complementary position. But that doesn’t matter, now.

Hence, we are at the beginning, again. The crisis is declared as much too serious to allow the luxury of philosophical reflections and distinctions and is only weakening, argumentatively, the severity of the global situation.

In fact, there is, up to now, no debate at all. The opposite position to ones position in this virtual debate is declared as mislead and for empirical and logical reasons as wrong.

It is still the dominating position that the government has to save the failing industries (banks, car, insurance, etc.) with the help of bailout strategies.

The government declare, it will use the tax payers money properly, fulfilling highest standards of economical thinking and ethics.

It doesn’t matter, where the money is from, directly from the national tax payer or indirectly, via China e.g. The government wasn’t elected to spend this money especially for bailouts, anyway.

Is the tax payers money private or public?
Is a tax payer private? What happens if the so called worker is his own capitalist? A shareholder of “his” company for which he is now on the way to pay his bailout with the generous help of the government? And the capitalist, e.g. the manager his own (self-)exploiter?

Hence, the tax payer is paying the bailout of his company where he is a shareholder and a worker at once, which makes him a owner of the company, which is, together with him, on the way to bankruptcy. This surely has to be prevented, otherwise the tax payer gets unemployed and is losing his status as a shareholder of his company.

It also has to be prevented because the tax payer could start a rebellion against the whole system, paid on the base of his private money he put aside. But how and where?

There are no capitalists nor workers, anymore. Both are intertwined into the complex reality of globalization and the self-exploitation by anonymous corporations.

That is, public money from the private tax payer has to save the private company owned by the capital. The state wants to become a part-owner of the capital with the money of the private shareholders of the company.

The mission is to save employment for the private shareholders.
This sounds humanitarian and is in harmony with a progressive protestant work ethic.

But this is only one side of the coin.

Is it not better for the public capital and the markets to get as much capital by the state’s private capital to be fit to survive against the consequences of mismanagement and global competition?

In fact, and this will become, in the future, more and more obvious , the capital has to be made fit against the cultural limitations of Western science and technology and their decline.

The so called nationalization of markets is in fact a disguised overtaking of the state by the capital.

The state, complementary, is hallucinating a control and annexation of the markets and the capital. He wants to become owner of the banks, etc.

The bailout ‘’Promotes centralized bureaucracy by allowing government powers to choose the terms of the bailout.‘’ (WiKi)

The state is playing the rescuer of the markets to save its own existence.
The capital is overtaking in disguise the state to save its own existence.

Therefore, the whole bailout saga is a secret coup:
coup d'´etat and coup de capitale.

The common of both is the commotion and the threat of their proper existence.
Both forms of existence are fundamentally out of date and obsolete.

The epistemological problem is:
The (bailout) situation is polycontextural and self-referential, and our mathematical and computational paradigms, ideologies and tools are mono-contextural and linear.

[...]

3.2. Blending of bailout

The blending interpretation of the bailout is blinding for the fact that the emergent features of whatever mélange between capital and state has first to be generated and paid.

But a blending approach,with its undecided mix, is best prepared to offer the necessary structural vagueness and non-transparency for ever growing new departments in the opacity of both administrations, the state and the capital.

http://markturner.org/blending.html

3.3. Chiasm of bailout

Inter-dependencies of both, capital and state, still intertwined and reciprocatively dependent, but at least a holistic and processual conceptualization and understanding of the mechanism is uncovered and conceived by the chiastic thematization of the bailout..

The chiastic approach of the bailout is emphasizing the complicity of both movements, the privatization and the nationalization, as belonging to the same reality.⁵

Hence, any controversial debate, like with the logical, contradictorily or antagonistic, modeling, which is understanding the parts as singular or in a reflective turn as dual, is obsolete within the chiastic understanding.

What has to be studied is the inter-relational complicity of both interpretations, their chiastic relationality, like the coincidence and exchange relations. To function as a whole of interdependency, the exchange relations between the opposite, but common terms have to be adapted by the coincidence relations between the similar but distributed terms.

The dualistic interpretation of the situation is conflictive and is not offering a tribune for negotiation. One, and only one interpretation is accepted by the defenders as adequate and true. On the base of such blindness, only ethical and moralizing judgements and the cry for more interventional actions are available.

The chiastic interpretation is offering an insight into the very mechanism of the conflictive situations. The mediating contextures of the chiasm is placing the structural possibility of negotiation and resolution, albeit inside of the framework of the scenario.

Both positions, the dualistic and the chiastic, are accepting the situation as it is. This is reasonable for descriptive and analytical motives. Despite its non-classical conceptuality, the chiastic model is not yet offering any structural strategies to overcome and reject the structural fundaments of the whole situation.

As a result, a kind of a humanitarian harmony of the antagonism remains as the ultimate aim. This solution of the problem is guaranteeing a safe return of the problem on a new, more complex and reflected level of development, securing an even deeper and broader stage-management of the “eternal recurrence” of booms, bubbles and crashes.

3.4. Diamond of bailout

The diamond approach is not denying the correctness of the chiastic modeling of the antagonistic situation but is trying to reject the whole construction in favor of a future-oriented transformation, where the components or “objects” of the chiasm, state and capital, are dissolved.

The diamond approach, with its complementarity of acceptional and rejectional thematizations, is separating the antagonistic aspects from their intertwining complicity. Both are conceived as autonomous societal movements, crossing at some parts, historically, and disappearing into other situational interactions.

Their complicity is historic and there is no necessity to reduce social life to it.

Because of the autonomic interplay between acceptional tendencies, framed by categories and rejectional tendencies, framed by saltatories, a chance to separate both structurations (of societal structures and movements) is conceived and accessible to realize.

3.5. The bailout of the bailout

Rejection of the figure of bailouts by dissemination and subversion.

The bailout of banks and industries by the governments is a big sandbox game: moving money, power and control from one societal heap to another societal heap of a national and/or global economy framed by the opposition of capital and state.

3.5.1. Dissemination: Polycontexturality of society

Polycontexturality of society is dissolving such terminological identifications like ‘state’ and ‘capital‘. Terms, like ‘state’ and ‘capital’, are not observer-independent identifications, like ‘potato’ or ‘herring’, which in fact are neither. They are depending on observations and are set into multiple perspectives, which are dissolving their a-historical and nominalistic identity.

Polycontextural logics are prepared to describe, formalize and implement such complexities in an adequate way.

Gunther Teubner is describing the challenges for law and society and its understanding by polycontextural thematizations.

"In Habermas’ “ideal speech situation”, formal procedures are supposed to guarantee the undistorted reciprocal expression of individual interests as well as their universalization into morally just norms. However, polycontexturality, one of the most disturbing experiences of our times, thoroughly discredits these recent variations of a Kantian concept of justice.

"With polycontexturality understood as the emergence of highly fragmented intermediary social structures based on binary distinctions, society can no longer be thought of as directly resulting from individual interactions, and justice can no longer be plausibly based on universalizing the principle of reciprocity between individuals.”

"In these perspectives, irreconcilable incompatibilities result from colliding social practices each of them endowed with their own rationality and normativity and with an enormous potential for mutually-inflicted damage.

The highest degree of abstraction has been reached by Gotthard Günther who radicalizes polycentricity into a more threatening polycontexturality, that is, a plurality of mutually exclusive perspectives which are constituted by binary distinctions. They are not compatible with one another and can be overcome only by rejection values which in their turn lead to nothing but to different binary distinctions.” (Teubner, p. 4/5)⁶

3.5.2. Subversion: Morphogrammatics of sociality

A morphogrammatic subversion of the understanding of society is rejecting their leading concepts and models of monetary and phono-logical interpretations.
Subversion, hence is not rejection “which in their turn lead to nothing but to different binary distinctions.” Binary distinctions discovered by rejections are establishing, again, contextures albeit new ones, and thus there is, in this strategy, no escape and nothing left except of contextures, and contextures of contextures.

There is not much to tell about such a morphogrammatic turn or abstraction, i.e. subversion, and it is hard to write and to inscribe how to subvert the surface structures of society to ‘enlight’ its hidden actional structuration by morphogrammatics.

Morphogrammatics is abstracting even from “the highest abstraction” (Teubner) of the contextures of polycontexturality.

To try it with metaphors, it seems to be reasonable, in what ever logic or rationality, that contextures too, are taking place, are positioned and localized, where?, in a kind of space(s). Such a space might be called an inscriptional space or even more metaphorically a (meta-/proto)conceptual space, giving space and loci for éspacement (spacing) and temporalisiation of positioned contextures and their interplay. Such a space is empty of all kinds of conceptual characterizations but it is nevertheless not a vague void, but structured, organized, beyond the dictatorship of order and chaos, axioms and rules.

That bailouts for state and capital can happen in a specific societal space, which has to be spaced and temporalized by actions and activities before/after capital and state can happen on/off historical stage of history, bailouts to save living space and future(s) have to be discovered and invented beyond state and capital.

Without fundamental change(s) nothing will be changed for the future.

FULL TEXT:
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Bailout Strategies/Bailout Strategies.html
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Bailout Strategies/Bailout Strategies.pdf

Category of Glue

2008-12-25T08:07:00.000-08:00

Is there any glue to stop the decline of Western culture?

FULL TEXT
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/lola/Category Glue/Category Glue.pdf

Abstract

A typology of different categories of glue (ordinary, super-, para-, proto-, trans-glue) are glued together with different strategies of gluing (set and category theory, combining logics, bi-category with (co)spans, polycontexturality and diamond theory).

Interpretations of “interactional glue”, “nerve glue”, “logical glue” are sketched.

Keywords of the dissemination of the concept of “glue” in history (Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Gunther, Derrida, Obama) and strategies (Glue, Opium, Mediation) of gluing them together under a general parapluie (ontology, society, solidarity, fear) are critically sketched.

The economical question is: Can we still afford to glue interactions together?

The category of glue isn’t blue. Categories are clueless to interaction and are banking unsecured resources.

How good is Portuguese Glue?

The best quality of Portuguese Glue is accessible, for an affordable prize, at the Logic Shops for Combining Logics in Lisbon, Portugal.

Everything, that doesn’t fit together by nature can be glued by categorical glues.

Best selling products, at the time, are the “(co)-span” articles by José Luiz Fiadeiro.

Without doubt, José’s glue, especially his “interactional glue”, is one of the most elaborated and purest form of glue on the market.

Glue, today, is highly important. It always was. To feel save and gluish it is crucial to use only the finest glue available.

"We found out Portuguese glue is very good! LOL"
PlanetGeorge Forums
The Place George Michael Fans Call Home
http://planetgeorge.org/Forum/viewtopic.php?t=3552

Such a high quality has its own tradition of expertise. Much was imported from the San Diego Zoo, California, USA. Other decisive work had been done by the scholars at place. They also had the opportunity to be guided by Brazilian specialists. As usual with success stories, there are hidden, well superseded sources, too.

Thus, the new product of combining and gluing is now available as the glue with the magic label "(co)span". To span has a temporal aspect and span is has metric determination of an inter-space or gap.

"In order to make interconnections independent of the nature of components involved, interaction protocols are formalized not in terms of morphisms (i.e. part-of relationships) but a generalized notion of (co-)span in which the arms are structured morphisms | the head (the glue of the protocol) and the hands (the interfaces of the protocol) belong to different categories, the category of glues being coordinated over that of the interfaces.”

"The 'semantics' of the protocol is provided through a collection of sentences | what we call interaction glue that establish how the interactions are coordinated. This may include routing events and transforming sent data to the format expected by the receiver."

Diamond theory

Agglutination, inversion, chiasm: “gl” and “lg"

Complementarity of categories and saltatories is interplaying in a glue-free game of jumps. Categories might be glued. Saltatories are not gluing their gaps. Complementarity between categories and saltatories happens in a glue-free interplay of bridging salti.

In other words, how can we glue things together without getting hassled by the clamminess of our glue and still being able to enjoy the gluishness of its intoxication?

The answer to this paradox is given by the jump-operation of saltisitions. Saltisitions and hetero-morphisms are characterized by antidromic orientations. Hence, it would be natural to think of them as products of inversions, i.e. as inverted morphisms. But that’s not a solution.

The inversion of “glue” is “ugly”, and there is no doubt that glue is fundamentally ugly and a categorial member of ugliness.

A combination of the ag- “gl” and de-glutinational “lg” to “gl-lg” is discovering a tiny chiasm in the very concept of the ugliness of (ag)glutination (GLAS, Derrida).

This phenomenon probably was the very reason that let to the misleading hope that the mechanism and strategy of inversion and dislocation of (semiotic) glue to help to avoid the crash of the evaporating glue of togetherness.

Saltisitions are inscribing the conditions of the possibility of categorical compositions. Compositions in category theory are glued together by the matching conditions. Their clamminess might be avoided by a jump from category to diamond theory.

FULL TEXT
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/lola/Category Glue/Category Glue.pdf

CCTV-Cogito, ergo sum

2008-10-30T03:31:00.000-07:00

The CCTV SSS Cogito Formula

Cogito, ergo sum. (Descartes)

Being watched, ergo sum?

Being watched, ergo registered.

Being registered, ergo killed.

Being killed, ergo watched!

Underground poster referring to CCTV cameras. Photograph: Tony Kyriacou/Rex features

Statutes of liberty
From the Magna Carta to CCTV, a new exhibition at the British Library tells the definitive story of the nation's fight for liberty.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/oct/30/civil-liberties-exhibition-british-library

Watch:
Self-surveillance System (SSS)
CCTV cameras behind the Tron Theater Glasgow watching each other from eye to eye.

Don't worry! Everthing is working fine! Watch the entries coming :-))
Responses to my Blog entry in the time of 1/2-1 second!!!??

HTML: http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/cogito-ergo-sum/cogito-ergo-sum.html

4 Channel DVR CCTV system
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Design, Supply and Installation of Covert CCTV Systems in
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Short Studies 2008

2008-10-29T06:24:00.000-07:00

Adventures in Diamond Strategies of Changes

PDF-collection

Preface

Tales and constructions of scripturality beyond iterability and its narrations.

How to write without telling stories and how to write stories without telling?
How to count without numbering? How to number without counting?
How to do both at once without counting on one of both?

Not writing stories is neither accepting nor rejecting story telling and the narration of writing.

Not counting is neither accepting nor rejecting numbering.

Writing is not counting with rejections and acceptance, neither with numbering and telling.

Narration is about and of something, sometimes this something
changes to nothing, writing the nothingness of rejection is fairly struggling with the self-understanding of natural language as such.

"Was mir schön erscheint und was ich machen möchte, ist ein Buch über nichts." (Flaubert/Meier)

Diamond strategies are not moving in a continuum or a labyrinthine field of being and nothingness, sense and non-sense, but jumping in the carré, designing fractured emptiness, not accessible to natural languages.

Neither to the artificiality of formal notational systems.

Saltations, branchings backwards, double salti, turning somersaults, and others, are topological metaphors that are closer to scriptural adventures than continuous iterations of meaningful sentences.

Situational topics, hazardous strategies, unchecked methods; rejecting adjectives.

Conceptual stories and stories of concepts, biographical and actual, transcribed and constructed experiences of anger and love.

Neutrality of observations and inventions entangled with abysmal ennui and annoyance. What else?

====CONTENT====

Modular Bolognese
Paradoxes of postmodern education.

A Tale of Fishes, Birds and Diamonds in Second-Order Epistemology
Why it is useless to write about the mono-contexturality of alphabetism and digitalism

Chez Maxime's
Human rights in a polycontextural world

Primary Thoughts to a Manifesto for Awareness Fashion Marketing

Which Equality?
How equal are equal human beings?

Generalized Diamonds
From monosemic to tectonic complementarity

Diamond Disremption
Diamond interpretation of the kenomic succession operation

Diamond Web2.0?
How social is social networking?

Web Mobility
Web computing between semiotic and kenomic spaces

Double Cross Playing Diamonds
Understanding interactivity in/between bigraphs and diamonds

Morphogrammatics of Change
A monomorphy based sketch of morphogrammatic transformations

PDF: http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Short Studies/Short Studies.pdf

Web Mobility

2008-08-13T08:45:00.000-07:00

Web computing between semiotic and kenomic spaces

FULL TEXT: HTML, PDF

Abstract:
Locality, positionality and mobility in semiotic, categorical, diamond and kenomic systems.

Kenomic mobility compared with Agha’s Universal Actor System (UAM) and Middleware approach and Milner’s Bigraphs.

Sketch of an Architectonics of Kenomic Mobility.

Introducing trans- and diamond-Actors and their chiastic interplay as interactional and reflectional actors in knowledge grids.

3.1 Architectonics of kenomic Actor systems

1. Primitive actors are zero-order actors, they are not allowed to interact but are responsible for the whole actor system to work properly, i.e. without paradoxes and circularity.

Primitive actors are not active on the stage or arena but at the back-stage. Primitive actors are hidden actors.

Primitive actors are enabling the interactional actions of basic actors. Without the support by primitive actors self-destructive actions of infinite regress, antinomic cricularities (paradoxes) are unavoidable in classical, i.e. monocontextural actor systems.

Primitive actors are typical for monocontextural (formal) systems.

2. Basic actors are first-order actors, their definition is to interact with other actors of an actor system.

Basic actors are the actors on stage. They are playing the big interactional drama on a single arena.

Basic actors are playing on stage on the base of the hidden support by primitive actors.

Basic actors are playing on stage on the prospect of the open guidelines by meta-actors.

3. Meta-actors are second-order actors, they are responsible for the interactivity between different actor systems in a global actor system, like the WWC (World Wide Computing).

Meta-actors are the directors of the actor play. They manage the interactions between the actors, the actor systems and their universal distribution in a global interactional game. Hence, on a higher level they are also the organizational committee of the distributed actor systems.

This reflectional capacity of the meta-levels of second order systems can be iterated to meta-levels of the second-order system. That is, in the second-order systems, meta-reflections (introspection) can be iterated without changing the second-order status of the system. No meta-reflection leads to a third-order system. No iteration of meta-reflection has to collapse into first-order systems.

Meta-Actor systems, which are not yet embedded into the Diamond Actor system are not immun against the infinite regress problem imposed by the infinite iterability of meta-reflections.

Deepness of meta-reflections of second-order systems vs. broadness of object-reflection of first-order systems.  This defines the reflectional Actor system for uni-versal interactions as it is exposed by Agha’s middleware approach.

4. Trans-actors are third-order actors, they are disseminating second-order actor systems over the kenomic matrix of polycontextural interactions. Polycontextural interactivity is pluri-versal.

trans -actors in polycontextural systems are represented by the so-called super-operators (identity, permutation, reduction, replication, bifurcation) defining operationally the interactionality between disseminated universal actor systems.

trans-actors are the mediators between disseminated actor systems. Mediators are the organizers of the interplay of different primordial actor systems.

Interactivity between disseminated actor systems is ruled by the mechanism of chiasms.

Chiasms are combining order-, exchange- and coincidence-relations between actors and actands on different levels of polycontexturality.

As a consequence of the chiastic structure of disseminated actor systems the primitivity of the primitive actors is resolved into a contextural relativity. What functions as a primitive in one contexture functions as a non-primitive in a neighbor contexture, and vice versa.

Hence, problems of circularity are restored at the situation of any single elementary contexture and resolved by the distribution of the construction of chiastic circularity over different contextures.

5. Diamond-actors are forth-order actors, they are embedding the activities of the trans-actors into diamonds.

Diamond-actors are enabling complex disseminated actor systems to incorporate the possibility of the new as the otherness of the actor system.

Diamond actors are playing a double role. They are responsible for the mobility system and are enabling its environment. The environment of a mobility system is the place of the otherness. This can incorporate attacking events and/or the surprise of the new.

Diamond actor systems are localized and positioned into the kenomic matrix.

The kenomic matrix is opening up spaces to general actor systems to place interactional, reflectional and interventional activities.

FULL TEXT:
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Web_Mobility/Web_Mobility.html
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Web_Mobility/Web_Mobility.pdf

Short Studies 5. Diamond Web2.0

2008-06-10T09:06:00.000-07:00

How social is social networking?

Full Study
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Diamond_Web2.0/Diamond_Web2.0.html
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Diamond_Web2.0/Diamond_Web2.0.pdf

"He said, 'For instance, what a student in Guangzhou prefers may be exactly opposite to that of a student in Beijing, and in CityIN we try our best to cater for different preferences'."
CityIn: A Lifestyle Social Networks Written by Tangosaon March 5, 2008

Questions

– What does it mean for social networking to search for sameness?

– How is such sameness dealing with its opposites?

– Which kinds of opposites do we know, and know to use?

– How global is social networking if it is limited to one and only one world-model?

– What does it mean that Web2.0 is mobile if it is restricted to information exchange with all its features of text, sound, video, and more?

– Will social networking not dry out soon and becoming boring if it is not able to support inter-actional creativity?

– Is it necessary to reduce the Web2.0 possibilities to global Web Services?

The following study is risking a very first approach to such questions by applying the Diamond Strategies.

Towards a Diamond Web2.0?

The Web2.0 understanding of societal activities is based on a non-societal model of hierarchical, mono-centered and solipsistic orientation.

Sociologically, it is based on the dichotomic distinction of the singular private and the plural public.  

A first step to diamondize Web2.0 approaches has not to go into the basics of transforming Web2.0 into the dynamic semantic Web3.0, it would be a reasonable transitional step, first to diamondize the existing technologies and user interfaces of Web2.0.

This could happen along the main metaphors of the Web2.0: social, global, mobile in connection to interactional and reflectional.

 The sketched ideas for a diamondization of Web2.0 technologies is taking the slightly futuristic position to propose Diamond Web2.0 from the position of the insights into the emerging Web3.0 and contrasting it from the more traditionalist concepts and technologies of the Web1.0.

In this sense, Diamond Web2.0 could be understood as a transitional concept to a social Web3.0, hence as a Web2.5.  

With Chang, I try to avoid the interesting discussion about the technological legitimacy of such a thing as Web2.0. There are enough arguments pro and contra, especially from the standpoint of Web1.0, to deny the technological relevancy of the term Web2.0.

But also from the position of an emerging semantic Web, i.e. Web3.0, Web2.0 is lacking significant conceptual changes to challenge the well known concepts and technologies of Web1.0.

On the other hand, it seems, that enough new features emerged, at least in the general use of the Web, i.e. Web services, to put it together as Web2.0.  

A little typology of the development of the Web is sketched. The idea behind this typology is to reflect on the degree of the involvement of the user (subject, reflexivity) into its usage.

It is also proposed that in contrast to the main stream opinion, the difference of surface- and deep-structure of the Internet and its form of usage, is of great relevancy.

Obviously, the pragmatic terminology of use, usage and user is applied, and for Web4.0, deconstructed, against its singularity.

It is obvious that this little typology is not proposing a predictional or futurological typology or design in the sense of Spivak and Kurzweil, but nothing more than a conceptual offer for possible orientations in what is and what might emerge in the future of the Web.   

It seems that such a change in optics, towards conceptual and paradigmatic analysis, is a necessary step to wake up from an enthusiastic but unrealistic dream.

Little typology

1. the information tools using user, Web1.0,
2. the media participant user, Web2.0,  
3. the knowledge producing and sharing user, Web3.0, 
4. the paradigm co-creating (interacting and intervening) user, Web4.0.

Content of the Study:

1. Diamond Strategies

2. Interactional diamondization

3. Web2.0 as "social”:: Social networking

4. .................."global":: World-models

5. ..................."mobile”:: Metamorphosis

6. ...................“Interactional and reflectional"

Full Study (in progress!):

http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Diamond_Web2.0/Diamond_Web2.0.html
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Diamond_Web2.0/Diamond_Web2.0.pdf

Short Studies 4. Which Equality?

2008-06-08T09:44:00.000-07:00

How equal are equal human beings?

Full Study:
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Equality/Equality.html
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Equality/Equality.pdf

Abstract

"All human beings are equal”. What does “equal” mean? What are the many definitions of “equal” and “equality"? From a Diamond perspective, concepts of sameness, from equality, similarity, bisimilarity to hetero-morphism and more are sketched in respect to their usage in ethical discourses, e.g Human Rights, of mono-, multi- and trans-cultural formations. What happens in such scenarios to the Golden Rule of ethics? The family of mankind? The brotherhood?

The following Short Study "Which Equality?", might be wrong in time. Things are still sub-human. The human rights not realized at all. On the other hand, what do we understand by equality if this term is defined only in a negative way, i.e. by exclusion of non-equality?

Despite the wrong timing, a conceptual effort to achieve a positive and constructive understanding of equality, anticipating futures to come, appears to be a reasonable entertainment.

Content

1. Interdependency of context and composition

Life under the regulation of equality has stopped to be funny. To do the same, which can have strictly different meanings and significance, can end up in prison, deportation or execution if judged by identity-trained forces and institutions of our free society.

2. Laws in mono-, poly- and transcultural formations

2.1 Mono-cultural formation
2.2 Poly-cultural formation
2.3 Trans-cultural formation

3. Facets of togetherness

3.1 Modi of togetherness
3.2 Equality
3.3 Similarity
3.4 Bisimilarity
3.5 Dissimilarity
3.6 Groups of Diamonds
3.7 The paradox of simplicity

4. The Queer World of the Golden Rule

4.1 Dissimination of GR
4.2 Paradoxes of an Ethics for Others

Full Study:
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Equality/Equality.html
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Equality/Equality.pdf

Rudolf Kaehr über Künstliche Intelligenz

2008-05-07T14:49:00.000-07:00

You might enjoy to watch some videos about Artifical Intelligence

produced in the early 90s by the filmmaker Thomas Schmitt and myself.

FREISTIL, oder die Seinsmaschine
Mitteilungen aus der Wirklichkeit

http://www.tagtraum.de

Regie Thomas Schmitt, Text Rudolf Kaehr

parts are re-published at:

http://www.vordenker.de/ggphilosophy/freistil.htm

The main thesis is focusing on the necessity of Artificial Living systems for the development of Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial Living systems are conceived as well separated from classical, symbol-based
artificial intelligence research and from neural network developments, which had
been in fashion in the 80s/90s.

In contrast to what we can learn today from experts, the message of these videos is
strictly conceptual and based on the insights of polycontextural logics and kenogrammatics.

Hence, what is still of interest is the idea of a new kind of machines beyond Turing-Machines.

Without doubt, the esthetics is still quite impressive.

Part 1 to 6:
http://tw.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=ggjpspecial

These videos, in German language, are parts from the whole TV-Film "Die Seinsmaschine" broadcasted by the German Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR).

Part 1 of the video

Short Studies 3. Chez Maxime's

2008-04-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

Human rights in a polycontextural world

Excerpts

From another story we might have experienced a first conflict involving ethics.   "Without doubt, our fish had a knowledge that he was living in water and not a perception; there was nothing to see at all. What he could perceive was his complex world full of strange stuff, and this funny fish girl. But not the water. What the fish girl didn’t know, neither Heinz, was that he properly acted according to Heinz’ CybernEthical Imperative:
 
"Always act to augment the amount of possibilities of the others!"

But he, our fish, not Heinz, didn’t accept the fish girl’s ignorance to try to reduce the necessities of his insights. Therefore, intuitively, his dual imperative of Heinz’s altruistic maxim came into force. 

"Never contemplate to reduce the amount of necessities of yours!" 

This dual maxim has to be set into a complementary maxim to conflict the Golden Rule of ethics. This is not simply involving a negation of selfless altruism, hence selfishness, but a first step into a liberation of ethics from ontology.   

Only if we accept the slavery of classical logics, which is declared as universal, natural and ultimate, again and again, we would have to believe that a rejection of altruism must necessarily be an affirmation of selfish egoism.   The fish was not selfish but true to the alter-ego of his fish girl. 

This intricate togetherness of a dual imperative for actions, which always are a composition of actions and never occur in the majesty of a singularity, is highly intriguing and needs, thus, a formalization in an appropriate formalism, like the diamond category theory, which is offering additional space for the togetherness of complementary and antidromic statements.
 
Therefore, the two imperatives have to be embedded into a complementary and reflectional interplay:

Co-CybernEthics
"Always act to augment the amount of possibilities of the others!"
"Never contemplate to reduce the amount of necessities of yours!" 

Universal, fundamental, natural, global 
Universal human rights are declared as universally valid and fundamental; as holding universally. What to do, if we don’t belief in a universe in which human rights could hold. What if we belief, instead, not in a uni-verse but in a pluri-verse or a multi-verse or even neither in a uni-/pluri- nor in any -verse at all? Are we then still entitled to be respected by the intentions of the Human Rights?

And if we still are entitled to be respected by the human rights, do we really want to be honored by an idea of humanity, which is stupidifying its members in such a radical way? Wouldn’t it be a better choice to search for chances of post-technological trans-humanism?   

Co-Article-0:
Everybody has the right to be a human being.
No human being has the obligation to remain as a human being.

Diamondization of the declarations

Article 1

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.[...]"  

No human beings are born non-free. No free born being is human. No born being is human. All human beings are different in dignity and rights. All dignities and rights are equal to different human beings. All dignities and rights are different to equal human beings. No dignities and rights are equal to different human beings. 

Co-Article-1:
All human beings are equal.
No equal is a human being.

Article 2

"Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration [...]."  

Nobody is entitled to all rights and freedoms in this Declaration. There is no Declaration for everyone to be entitled to all rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration. There is nothing set forth for the rights and freedoms of everyone. Everyone is free. Nobody is free. Nobody is unfree. No free one is everybody.  

Co-Articel-2:
Every one is free.
No free one is everybody.

This game of deconstruction has to be played situatively, every time, until an agreement is reached in the actual group as a result of contextural, i.e., interactional, reflectional and interventional, negotiations. 

FULL TEXT: http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Chez_Maxime/Chez_Maxime.html

Short Studies: 2. Fishes and Birds

2008-04-30T04:27:00.000-07:00

A Tale of Fishes, Birds and Diamonds in Second-Order Epistemology 

Why it is useless to speak about the mono-contexturality of alphabetism and digitalism

The Endness of Events

The endness of events in a open/closed world are not simply ending in an unqualified way. Endness has to be connected with rhythms instead of linear or non-linear progressions.

The endness of events in a open/closed world are not simply ending in an unqualified way. Endness has to be connected with rhythms instead of linear or non-linear progressions.  
A rhythm has a beginning and an end; endlessly. An open/closed world is poly-rhythmic. Scientific linear time structures of whatever complexity are without rhythms. Western science beliefs in a 1-rhythm world: from the big bang to the wee crash.

In many papers I emphasized the importance of linearity for the Western way of thinking and its mathematically based technology.  In-between I have the feeling that I always experienced a strange lack of response to my argumentations. In a metaphor, I feel like a fish telling his female fish friend: "Honey, do you know, we are living in water?" And getting the harsh response: "Shut up you wancker, I don’t fancy you!".

OK, not everybody can be mesmerized like Monsieur Jourdain after he learned that he is speaking all his life prose. And not everybody thinks that this is trivial anyway.

For good reasons we can belief that there is no reason to think that the fish girl was stubbern or even stupid. She easily could have pointed to the un-denial fact that there is no such thing like water in the water to perceive.

What is in the water are all these different plants, stones, animals, and surely, other fishes. But no water at all. This is more than clear. There might be some areas where it is harder to swim or where other stuff is moving very fast or areas where nothing is moving at all. The stuff might also move in all direction, at once. And as far as she can swim there is no limit and no reason to stop her swimming. What can be perceived and sensed in her world as a fish are objects of all sorts but not water.

Another approach, which has not to struggle with the problems of the abstractness of the arguments for linearity of alphabetism with its atomicity, abstractness and ideality of signs, could be the more generally acknowledged fact of the endless repeatability of (sign) events.

This concept is independent of dimensionality, parallelisms, circularities, interactions and other seemingly non-linear complex and pictorial or sonic processes and structures.

As for the swimming moves of our fish girl, which are not restricted by any obstacle, to each move there is a next move, and so on. Swimming is producing swimming; only a swimmer is swimming, and no swimming is leaving the category of swimming. Outside of swimming there is no swimming. Swimming adds to swimming, and remains swimming; endlessly. No swimming transforms into flying; no swimming permutes into walking. And so on.  

OK, in real-world conditions, the fish girl will stop to swim because of physical limitations of her life-span. The same happens, evidently, to the chalk and blackboards of the high priests of formal systems. The endless iterativity of their sign systems will have, in real-world conditions, unavoidably, some natural ends.

This is in sharp contradiction to the abstractness of the definition of signs and Obs in formal systems.

Nevertheless, repeatability is open and endless. The iterability of repeatibility is stable.

The other fact, we could agree to some degree, is given by the identity of the repeated objects. It may not be a too big challenge to see and perceive, clara et distincta, that this concept of identity is best realized, as Hegel pointed out, by the Western alpha-numeric sign systems.

A number or a letter is as a number or as a letter strictly identical with itself. Take the inscription on your bank note: 5 USDollar. There is nothing to interpret, 5 is 5 and USDollar is USDollar. And nothing else.   

Hence, endless repeatability is realized within the realm of identical entities. Or: identities are realized in the realm of iterability.

There is no identity without iterability and no iterability without identity.

This, again, happens in the ideal world of sign systems, i.e., in the mind of semioticians and mathematicians; and not at the blackboard, nor in citations or plagiarism.  

Therefore, if we accept iterability, we have not to struggle with the strangeness of the challenge to be aware of swimming in strange waters. Identity, at least to some degree of fuzziness, and the endlessness of repeatability in all its mathematical forms, seems to be accessible to everyone and understood universally without getting involved with the paradox of the medium we are living in.

Things are getting less natural and universal if we stipulate a pluri-verse instead of a classic universe. But this is a story to come!  

It seems that nobody wants to share my linearity thesis. It is said, all over again: The world is hyper-complex, fractal, undecidable and the World Wide Web decentralized and chaotic. Old alphabetism is loosing its dominance to images, pictures, pictograms, videos and sound.

More theoretical motivated guys are talking about cellular automata, parallelism, actor communities, grid computing, etc. Therefore, there is no such thing as a dominance of linearity and identity in a post-modern world full of paradoxes, parallaxes, ruptures and abysses.

  A.A. Markov’s linearity thesis is not only unknown by media scientists but put under the carpet by computer scientists as old foundational fundamentalism (FOL) and bad reductionism.  What to do against such a poverty of thinking?  

Simply, change topic!

Give it up! Ask our fish!

  Hence, forget linearity!   

Enjoy endless repeatability! The world is rich and complex, and you too.   

And there is also space enough to defend this situation of repeatability before we end up in the paradoxes of self-defence.

[...]

The consequences for the entire paradigm of composability, based, as we learned, again and again, on iterability, are enormous. Not only an absolute new kind of double-compositionability appears on stage, even more.

Primary to all composition, there is the difference between superpositional and antidromic combination. Instead of dealing with superpositionality, interactionality and reflectionality between superpositional and antidromical movements, iter-/alterabilities, are taking place, well positioned in the kenomic grid of Diamond Strategies.

This is really a great relief!   

Forget debates about the monocontexturality of combinatorial logics, their fixation on alphabetism and its linearity and atomicity, as sine qua non of all composability.

Forget the postmodern theater of disseminating colored contextures of repeatability. 

Forget the phantasm of our hidden universal mockingbirds in whatever fibered forests.

Listen to the songs of free mating birds! Enjoy your Diamonds!

FULL TEXT: http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/Fishes+Birds/Fishes+Birds.html

Short Studies: 1. Modular Bolognese

2008-04-16T09:16:00.000-07:00

Paradoxes of postmodern education.

In a series of small texts, which I'm on the way to publish, I will develop some easy accessible thoughts concerning Diamond Strategies and Diamond Category Theory. I will collect those studies under the umbrella of Short Studies.

With all those studies I will develop some application of the Diamond Strategies to well known topics, like modular education, transdisciplinarity, human rights, Kantian Maxim, plagiarism, fashion and social networking.

The first 4 studies in progress are listed below:

Modular Bolognese. Paradoxes of postmodern education.
Birds and Diamonds in Second-Order Epistemology
Primary thoughts to a Manifesto for Awareness Fashion Marketing
Diamond Web2.0. How social is social networking?

Let's start with the beginning of the first Short Study!

Modular Bolognese –

Paradoxes of postmodern education.

Modules in Metaphors
Without doubt, I like Spaghetti Bolognese. Especially, the Bolognese between the spaghetti. Even more, I like the Bologna Reform, which is unifying European education. As we had to learn, spaghetti in their chaotic wildness are not supporting the desires of clean decomposability and reusability, needed for real-time control and surveillance. Like it happened with ravioli, the Bologna Reform invented the modularity of knowledge for university education. Each topic has to be framed by its module. Each module is cleanly separated from the other modules. Like ravioli, which are coupled only loosely and are building, ideally, a cluster, each module has its own content, structured hierarchically into topics, sections and paragraphs, enabling its specific taste and evaluation.  

[A full-fledged theory of the Pasta Strategies is available at the complete Pasta Theory of Software Development. The present text about Noodles will be published at Moodle.]  

But ravioli are nothing without their sauce! That’s obvious and natural for the people of Bologna. But hard to understand north of the Alps.   What are we doing with the sauce? Is it simply another module? But how can the in-betweeness of modules in a modular system be itself a module? This contradicts academic logic; it maneuvers you immediately into headaches of logical paradoxes.

If the module between the modules is itself a module, what is the in-betweenness between this conglomerate of modules, such a meta-module, and the original modules themselves? A meta-meta-module or simply nothing? Or is it the para-module of fluidness and fuzziness, defined by Water Logic? Do we need a proto-module to manage this new inter- and trans-modular wilderness?  What happens if the sauce between the ravioli becomes a sausage?Is the sausage an ultra-module? It belongs to the modular system exactly if it doesn't belong to the modular system. The sausage is a module exactly if it is a ravioli and at the same time it is a ravioli if it is a sausage.

And by the way: Is the logic of this argumentation itself a module or is it superior or prior to all modules? Is it a a module with its own subversive logic or simply a pseudo-module?  There are not many chances left to solve this paradoxical problem. One radical strategy tells you: Eat the sausage and forget the problem!

Yes, but what are we doing with a ravioli Bolognese without sauce? We simply could smash the dry ravioli into the bin. All problems solved!   But there is another solution too: Mediate the ravioli and the sausage with a brand new sauce, well mixed, half ravioli and half sausage. This strategy has a safe legitimation and is best evaluated by the tools of Fuzzy Logic.   

Unfortunately, the Fuzzy Strategy is of short reliance as it is demonstrated in my Warentest paper, which is probably the very first evaluation of the reliance of logical systems for interactive devices in commercial telecommunication.  Ok, the game has to go on. Why not introduce, just for academic reasons, a new mega-sausage between the ravioli and the first sausage and the ravioli and the mixed – fuzzy based – sauce consisting of ravioli and sausages between the real ravioli and the real sauce Bolognese? But what’s real in such an administrational intervention? The sauce, the ravioli, the sausage or the content in the ravioli or the European administrators of the ravioli complot?

Even worse, a good Bolognese is not a homogenous module, it is in itself full of well-balanced differences of overlapping interactions of different strength.   Hence, the interplay between ravioli is not modular but sub-modular. Ravioli are building 3-dimensional clusters, and only a few of them are showing a flat hierarchical order of composition. It is more than clear, that the content of a single ravioli Bolognese is of no interest at all. What is of interest is the clear cut distinction between the shape and content of each ravioli and the disjunctive separation from other ravioli.

 Nevertheless, each single ravioli has to pass a general test of quality: measure, weight, taste, design, originality. The evaluation is general or even universal because each ravioli is tested by strict scientific and objective quantificational methods.

There are surely differences in the general cluster, there are ravioli for the beginner, ravioli for the advanced and ravioli for the post-docs and ravioli for the tester and ravioli for the administration, etc. And all are fitting well into the European ontology of modularized knowledge taxonomies and ontologies and the qualifications of the generalized European user of the Semantic Web.
FULL TEXT here.

http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/transMODULE/transMODULE.html

Chinese Ontology

2007-07-14T02:22:00.000-07:00

An Aperçu

Chinese ontology (cosmology) can be put into two main statements:

A. Everything in the world is changing.

B. The world, in which everything is changing, doesn't change.

This two main statements are designing a paradoxical constellation.

Hence,

1. The finiteness of the world is not closed but open.
Because of the changing statement (A) the finiteness (B) is not static.
"In a closed world, which consists of many worlds, there is no narrowness. In such a world, which is open and closed at once, there is profoundness of reflection and broadness of interaction." (The Book of Diamonds, Intro)

2. Everything in the world is connectable.
Because of the finite structure of the world, entities are accessible in many ways.

3. Connections are bi-directional.
Because of the finiteness there is no uni-directionality in linear time.

4. Bi-directionality is chiastic.
Because the world is changing, the way back is not exactly the same as the way forwards. This is defining the heterarchic grid structure of the world.

5. The modeling process of Chinese ontology is not phono-logocentric.
Because of the paradoxical character of the "ontology" it can not be represented by phono-logical statements of identity-based mathematics and logic.

Therefore,

6. Because it is written in logical sentences, this aperçu of a definition of Chinese ontology is a paradox metaphor.

7. A first operative description and formalization of Chinese ontology is proposed by the Diamond Theory, which is in a trans-phonological sense a paradox.

8. Diamond theoretic paradoxy is positively inscribed in Diamond Theory as the interplay, i.e., chiasm, between categories and saltatories. Saltatories are complementary to categories. Complementarity is not duality.

9. The structure of the interplay (chiasm) of categories and saltatories in Diamond Theory is defined by the proemial relationship.

10. The proemiality of the proemial relationship is inscribed as an interplay between order-, exchange- and coincidence relations, distributed over different loci.

11. Because of the finiteness of the world Diamonds have a location in it. The location (position) of Diamonds is inscribed by their place-designators.

Thus,

12. The self-referential paradoxy/parallaxy of the metaphor of Chinese ontology is realized by the operative calculus of Diamonds as an interplay between categories and saltatories of Diamond Theory.

The Complementary Blog: Diamond Strategies

2007-07-12T04:21:00.000-07:00

Have a look at the complementary Blog to the Chinese Challenge Blog:

Rudy's Diamond Strategies.

The new Blog is presenting, step by step, new insights into the mathematical theory of Diamonds.

Chiasm (Categorification, Diamondization)

Diamond: 2-graphs with 2-structures

i) Data: 2-diagram C1–s,t––>Co/Co<–diff–C1 in 2-Set Objects in diamonds are involved into 2 operations: coincidence and difference. Coincidence is producing composition and therefore commutativity.
Differences are producing hetero-morphisms and therefore jumpoids.

ii) Structure: composition, identities + complement, differences

iii) Properties: unit, associativity + diversity, jump law

iv) Interaction: Chiasm between category and saltatory.

"In ordinary category theory we have 1-dimensional arrows ––>; in higher-dimension category theory we have higher-dimension arrows."

"...n-categories are studying morphisms between morphisms." Tom Leinster

Hence, Diamond theory is neither studying linear ordered arrows nor morphisms between linear ordered arrows but the complementarity of morphisms and hetero-morphisms, acceptional and rejectional morphisms, i.e., the relations between the operation of composition and its complementary morphisms.

In this sense, diamond theory is studying 2-dimensional, i.e., tabular categories, independent from the questions of n-categories or others.

Thus, diamond theory is the study of tabular categories as an interaction of categories and saltatories. Saltatories are the complementary diamond structures of categories.

The term interaction is correct because the interplay between categories and saltatories happens inside the diamond definition and is not only a meta-theoretical fact like the duality of categories in category theory.

Compositions as operations are not thematized in Category theory but only their result, which are new morphisms.

Diamond theory is thematizing the activity of the composition operator not as a morphogram but as a complementarity to the operator, implemented as a hetero-morphism.

Diamonds are thematizing the basic operation of category theory as such: the operation of composition. The thematization is modeled into the hetero-morphisms.

In a general setting of graphematic analysis of composition the morphogrammatics of the operator "composition" has to be taken into account, too. That is, the neither-nor gesture of categorical object and morphism has a double face: hetero-morphism and morphogram of composition.

As Categories can be generalized to n-Categories, Diamonds can be generalized to n-Diamonds.

Topics
Category Theory: object/morphism
n-Category: morphism/morphism
Diamond Theory: categories/saltatories.

A Schematic Calendar of Epochs

2007-06-20T07:45:00.000-07:00

One of the big successes of Western globalization is the globalization of its understanding of human nature. There is one and only one such understanding. And this is the Western concept of human nature. Other understandings of human nature are simply not yet matured to the Western model.
This judgement, obviously, is applied to the Islamic world and it is thought that the new Chinese awakening will soon follow the Western model of humanity with all its noble achievements.

The idea of different ways of realizing humanity, different types of human self-definition, is taboo.

It is accepted only backwards to distinguish high civilizations from Primitive cultures. A projection into the futures is damaged by the well known attempts of the German Uebermensch ideology. Thus, to stay clean, we have to believe in Americanism and its ideology of humanity and human rights.

This is not in conflict with the American dream of TransHumanism. TransHumanism is not questioning the very idea of human beings but tries to augment pragmatically its very realization.

Funny enough, Gotthard Gunther, with his cybernetic studies from the 50s, is one of the Grand fathers of TransHumanism .

As a philosopher of history, Gunther proposed another model of anthropology and civilizations which is open to futures and able to understand the past. Because of its structural conceptuality it is as neutral to ideologies as possible.

Gotthard Gunther proposed a theory of a connection between historical epochs and the structural complexity of their logics used in practice and reflected in science. The complexity of a logical formation was, at this time, considered as the many-valuedness of a logical system.

– The epoch of Animism is considered as the epoch of 1-valuedness.
– The modern Occidental, esp. European epoch is connected with 2-valuedness.
– The post-modern US-American epoch is proposed as 3-valuedness.

– It seems that the post-Occidental epoch of Chinese thinking is linked with
4-valuedness which is opening up the pre-semiotic patterns of morphogrammatics and general m-valuedness.This step is not yet considered in Gunther's approach.

At the time of the proposal of his theory of Western civilisation, topics like morphogrammatics had not yet been discovered.

It has to be mentioned, that Gunther’s concept of many-valuedness is poly-contextural and thus principally different from the logical multiple-valuedness of Lukasievicz, Post and others. Their multiple-valuedness is strictly mono-contextural.

The first 3 epochs are dominated by their Double Blind Spot, that is, the lack of self-reflectionality and awareness of being positioned into history.
Technically, their morphogrammatics are not accessible and are in the hidden.

The 3-valued epoch is opening up a certain relativism of 2-valuedness, discovering a first Blind Spot, but remains in the negativity of denial (of roots, etc.). Such a relativism has no means to reflect itself and to produce a "positive" self-definition.

This ability of self-reflection is given within the 4-valued model, but this model is realizable only with the simultaneous acceptance of its morphogrammatics. That is, with the acceptance of the distinction between general valuedness and value-free kenogrammatics.

The first three epochs had been linked with the semantic and meontic (semantics of negativity) function of valuedness.

The fourth epoch is rejecting the dominance of valuedness in favor of the activity of diamondization as an activity of kenogrammatics.

Valuedness is strongly connected with names, notions and sentences.
Multi-valuedness can be considered as a classic interpretation of the semantics of inter-textuality.

"Totem and Tabu" may correspond to an ancient name-based understanding of the world.
Notion-based thinking is opening up a scientific-narrative approach to the world in the sense of the first world model (Lambda Abstraction).
A reflective, relational and relativistic word-view is based on sentences (Modal logics).

With the new distinction of valuedness (semantics, meontics) and morphogrammatics (kenogrammatics) a full reflectional and interactional system is possible.

Differentiations in the transitions

According to Gunther’s theory of history the transition from the 1-valued to the 2-valued world-view happened in a differentiation of two decisions producing a structural difference between the Oriental and the Occidental existence (psyche).

Formally, the semantics of a two-valued system has a positive and a negative value. The function of the values is to designate or to non-designate. With the choice for a coincidences between the positive values and its designative function a strict symmetry between positivity and negativity is guaranteed. This is the Occidental decision.

The Oriental decision is the opposite:
The negative value has a designative function. With that, a indefinite asymmetry is established.

In epistemological term, the symmetric 2-valued world-view is based on a egological ground, founding subjectivity, spirituality and temporality, the asymmetric concept is founding spaciality, objectivity.

The grammatological coincidences are obvious:
The Occidental world-view is based on alphabetical sign systems, i.e., logocentrism.
The Oriental world-view is based on a planar system of characters.

Technologically, the western model was accessible to formalization, producing formal systems, incorporating the Arabian algebraic and algorithmic concepts and procedures and exploiting the power of the Indian concept of zero.
This historic formation was then connected with the idea of mechanical computation, like it was realized long ago by the Chinese Abacus.

A similar formalization of the structure of the Chinese writing system like the formalization of alphabetism has not yet been attempted or considered as a necessary task.

Further on, more open questions are occurring.
What are the differentiations in the transition from the 2-valued to the 3-valued system?
And, what are the corresponding transitions from the 3-valued to the 4-valued world-view?

A 3-valued system is at first enabling circular structures, i.e., negation cycles. Thus, the characterization of the values as designative or non-designative is relative.

The hegemony of strict dualism of the 2-valued approach is dissolved. Such a negation cycle is the smallest possible real cycle next to the 2-valued self-cycle.

This may be a hint to understand in a positive way the US-American relativism and its realization in pragmatism. (Peirce, Dewy, Royce)

But also its structural Double Blindness.

Additional to this "value-oriented" structural approach of Gunther, considerations about the differentiation of alphabetic and hieroglyphic writing systems had been involved into his theory of history. The thesis of a weakness of alphabetism in contrast to a specific identity strength of Chinese writing had been explored.

"That is, in holding to the ideograms, lies an unconscious insight of a massive asymmetry between spoken and written language. It is the written language, on which a main culture rests. It possesses an identity strength, which stands out clearly against the identity weakness of the spoken word." Gunther

Media theoreticians, like Alfred Kittler, have studied in recent time the connection between alphabetism, culture and computer technology in European history, but they are not aware that mathematics, programming paradigms, formal systems are depending on the linearity and atomicity of alphabetism.

This blindness of alphabetism and its late ideological defence by European media scientists is just what has to be surpassed if we want to stop the self-destruction of culture in general.

Gotthard Günther's DETAILED STATEMENT OF THE PROJECT, 1953

But the proof of a new logic is found in its application. I have therefore - after developing the basic categories of that new technique of thinking - applied my three-valued non-Aristotelian logic to the problem of History.

If you look at American History with conceptual categories of non-Aristotelian origin this course of human events does not longer appear as a continuation of Western Civilization but as a novel departure from the general trend of history in the Old World of the Eastern Hemisphere.

A new and indigenous form of historical existence is emerging in the New World of the Western Hemisphere - and with it goes a principal rejection (or technical secularization) of the metaphysical premises of Old World History. This is indicated in Thomas Jefferson's amazing criticism of Plato's "Republic" and his repudiation of the historical concepts implied in Plato' s philosophy.

My interpretation of American History is based on the following trend of thought: Generally speaking the history of Man has so far developed on two very different historical levels.

The first is that of the so-called Primitive Culture with the concomitant metaphysical world-conception of animism. The animistic interpretation of Reality is the product of a mind which works with a one-valued logic. Here the subject is completely identified with the object, namely the world that surrounds it.

The following, second level of the history of Man is that of the so-called regional High Civilizations (Egypt, India, China, Greek/Roman and Western Civilization of northern Europe). In this second form of historical existence Man develops concepts of life based on a two-valued pattern of consciousness.
It is significant that Aristotle's logic of duality was discovered in this era.

Traditionally American History is regarded as belonging to that epoch. It is tacitly assumed that since the advent of Columbus America should be regarded as an extension of Western Civilization.

It is my contention, on the other hand, that American History does not anymore belong to this second level which is characterized by the appearance of regionally limited High Civilization!

On the American continent a novel form of History is coming into existence, constituting a third level of World-History.

The structure of the human consciousness is changing and with it the spiritual aims of the race. Not the knowledge of natural objects but the science of Man himself will be the central core of all intellectual efforts.

This, however, presupposes a new logic in which an exact theory of the subject as different from the mere object is developed.

For this purpose a three-valued logic is absolutely necessary.

The American mind is potentially non-Aristotelian ... or let us say: post-Aristotelian.

The primitive mind is pro-Aristotelian, and the epoch of regional High Civilizations is dualistic. Only this dualistic mentality corresponds with the concepts of a two-valued logic. (Gotthard Gunther, 1953)
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/archive/GUNTHER-GODEL/GUNTHER-GODEL.htm

中国挑战 - 电视新闻 (TV News, Weina Betty Sun)

2007-06-19T04:36:00.000-07:00

《中国的挑战：一个新猜想》

—— 对"中国挑战"说的一个注释

"我们能从中国人没有教我们的地方学到什么？"

——鲁道夫

主流文化依赖于书写模式。

民族的理性特质、他们的技术有效性、他们把社会组织起来、交流信息、以及
他们的艺术科学等等这一切都跟书写模式分不开；人
们在书写和创建自己作为典籍的文化实践中学会思维和生活。

主流文化总是依赖于某种书写里包含的理性和技术模式。一

般来说，书写是一种文化、政治和技术形成的最抽象的机制和技术

——欧洲的文化及第一次猜想

欧洲的文化依赖于字母书写和印度的零占位机制，这种机制使得算术、计算的经济合理、形
式化和编程语言成为可能。

莱布尼茨提出第一个关于中国文字的猜想。
他设想了一种"通用语言作z为国家和人民之间沟通的可信赖的通信基础。

他的这个想法类似于中国的象形文字，
中国象形文字通过典籍在不同口头语言之间起着桥梁作用。

要实现这一梦想他发明了凝练的数字表示和计算系统，这就是二进制系统，依此
作为欧洲对古老的中国"易经 "的一个回应，
最终他发明了独立于任何民族语言的运算方法和逻辑，还有作
为计算机的原型的计算机器。

现代欧洲科学技术遵循了莱布尼茨的想法，产生了技术上的二进制主义和数字主义，并形成
了今天西方——以及亚洲——的基本技术和经济力量。

但是，欧洲的技术力量停留在"老欧洲"的意识形态、形而上学和伦理学框架和限制当中。

——美国的美式梦想

在美国，欧洲的思维和技术形式摆脱了她的形而上学老套子，发明了"无所不在的计算"，实
现了人工智能，人工生命，认知系统，机器人等等；实
现了无限扩张的数字主义

今天，美国的美式梦想气数已尽！

美式梦想的成功已经接近了尾声；而老欧洲还由她的古希腊起源支配着，
摆脱了欧洲限制的美式梦想现在迷失了根本，失掉了设计未来的精神源泉。

美国的必然衰落是由于"无根"！

与欧洲分道扬镳，成了无本之木无源之水，在数字主义达到了她的颠峰。

在沉湎于"数字形而上学" 中并归结为0和1的不朽精神世界中，展望
更先进的科技发展似乎是不可能的了。

全部美国式发展会在"数字实用主义"世界观中固步自封！

所以，基于古希腊字母文字、印度的数论和莱布尼兹采用中国文字模型，这
一切作为欧洲和美国的美式梦想失去了设计世界未来发展的力量。

——中国书写模式

中国没有发展出类似的哲学、科学和技术，这是因为她的超复杂的书写模式，
现在正在采用西方的科学技术成果；
但是，中国在下一个时代自有对西方的优势：有没有被开发的丰富典籍资源。

中国文字永远是她的文化和政治的基础和保证，没有"字母线性主义"和数字主义的限制。
西方思维的线性性质是更容易映射进入中国理性的"表格样式"的。

这种映射过程，在中国文字的自明性质方面不会导致任何混乱。

中国文字概念是表格样式的、多维度的、嵌入式的、开放的、复
杂的和基于民族最古老文化传统的。

而这些特征正符合科学技术在处理现代社会问题和开创新未来的要求的。

因此，为今而言，所谓中国的挑战，不是为西方视为危惧的新的经济实力和经济扩张，而
是在作为未来技术革命基础的中国理性重新发现的可能性方面。

中国理性把任何美国式的东西远远地甩在了后面。中国对西方的挑战不是经济的、
也不是政治的或者军事的；

苏醒的技术中国和经济中国这个事件并不构成对西方的所谓的"大挑战"，
真正的挑战是重新发现她的文字系统，并设计出新的理性形式系统，
就像创造新的数学和新的编程语言一样；

是面对一个崛起的中国我们是否做好了充分的准备。

因为忙于适应西方的技术和经济，
中国官方还没有意识到这种形成未来主流文化基础的可能性。
可能吧，十九世纪是欧洲世纪，二十世纪是美国世纪，
而二十一世纪将是中国世纪。

——形态语法学：第二个猜想

我的想法作为后欧洲的第二个关于中国文字的猜想由此而生。
第一步，我提出"多结构逻辑（Polycontextural Logic）"的研究和
"形态语法学（Morphogrammatics）"研究，作为在西方模式走到尽头时，对
中国理性和技术的概念系统作的一个可能的、新的理解。这

一工作——我知道它的风险——是某种实验性的猜想，具有永恒自解构的能力，超越西
方、亚洲在思维和技术方面的"具象中心主义"，形而上学的单一结构主义。

形态语法学和多结构理论包含并且超越西方的思维、计算和编程语言的设计，能够
满足新时代对操作理性提出的表格样式的处理和对复杂性处理的要求。

猜想总是文化传统革命的前奏，总是为文化管理者所拒绝。

作者：Rudolf Kaehr
翻译：韩宪平
来源：思维实验室
网址：www.thinkartlab.com

《中国的挑战：一个新猜想》Chinese Challenge-TVNews

The Chinese Challenge Video-Stills

2007-04-09T07:15:00.000-07:00

《中国的挑战：一个新猜想》

The Chinese Challenge

—— 对"中国挑战"说的一个注释

Hallucinations for Other Futures

Donna and Shell

我们能从中国人没有教我们的地方学到什么？

What can we learn from China that China is not teaching us?

Europe is lost in its search of the dying and buried roots in Greek heritage.

我们能从中国人没有教我们的地方学到什么？

What can we learn from China that China is not teaching us?

今天，美国的美式梦想气数已尽！

Today, the US-American dream is exhausted!

今天，美国的美式梦想气数已尽！

美式梦想的成功已经接近了尾声；而
老欧洲还由她的古希腊起源支配着，摆脱了欧洲
限制的美式梦想现在迷失了根本，失掉了设计未来的精神源泉。

While Old Europe is still occupied with its Greek roots,
US-America, who got rid of these European limitations,
now, is missing roots as inspirational resources to design futures.

The necessary decline of America is rooted in its lack of roots.

Today, the US-American dream is exhausted and has come to a closure.

The Chinese Challenge to the West is the re-discovery of a
new way of thinking, again

中国对西方的挑战不是经济的、也不是政治的或者军事的；苏醒的技术中
国和经济中国这个事件并不构成对西方的所谓的"大挑战"，真正的挑战是
重新发现她的文字系统，并设计出新的理性形式系统，就像创造新的数学
和新的编程语言一样；是面对一个崛起的中国我们是否做好了充分的准备。

The Chinese Challenge to the West is not economical, political or military.
It is not the event of a re-awakening economic and technological China which is the Grand Challenge to the West but the possible re-discovery of the operationality of its writing system for the design of new rational formal systems, like new mathematics and new programming languages.

China has found its roots again to build a future.
China’s historical advantage to the West is that its scriptural
resources are not yet exploited.

中国挑战向中国将保存它自己的文化在与人类一个新世纪的转折过程中。

它怎么可能做? 我们
How can it be done?
let's do it!
The Chinese Challenge to China is to preserve her own culture in
the process of the transition to a new epoch of humanity.

它怎么可能做? 我们做它!
How can it be done? Lets do it!

它怎么可能做? 我们做它!

它怎么可能做? 我们
How can it be done?

我们做它!The Chinese Challenge to China is the chance to re-discover its
own
way of thinking, again.

let's do it! 我们做它!

我们做它!

Hallucinations always had been at the beginning of cultural revolutions.
It always has been the job of cultural administration to deny it.

猜想总是文化传统革命的前奏，总是为文化管理者所拒绝。
Stills from the Video "The Chinese Challenge::中国挑战" about an idea of the new role of China and Chinese thinking beyond economical, political and military matters in English and Chinese by Shell Ni (film maker, Shanghai/London) and Donna Rosso (actress, Ireland/Glasgow) recorded spontaneously by me, holding the wee camera into the air, at a dark Sunday afternoon at the Garnethill/Glasgow viewpoint, edited by Ann Vance (film maker, Glasgow).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCNcFmPl-9E

Proto-Structure of Diamond Strategies

2007-03-29T05:03:00.000-07:00

„Everything is true: not everything is true; both, everything is true, and
not everything is true; or, neither everything is true nor is everything not true.
This is the teaching of the Buddha.“ Madhyamika Karika

Beyond names and propositions, again
Without getting lost into the deepness of philosophical and grammatological studies we can apply the mechanism of proto-structure, i.e., the activity of tetraktomai,i.e., to use the tetraktys, on a more common arena of emotive-cognitive organization in communicational situations. The Diamond Strategies are obviously operating beyond notions and statements, thus, if applied in therapeutic situations, they are not primarily a "talking cure" (Freud).

Our orientation in the world is mainly guided by sentence/notion based thematizations. To diamondize, like to tetraktomize, is to abstract and to subverse this semantic level of thematization in favor of its dynamic patterns, i.e., the morphograms of interaction/reflection of communication.
The process of morphic abstraction is pushed by questioning the existence (ek-sistenz, Heidegger) of the communicand (client).
The existence is what can be abstracted from the historic and local stories of the person involved. But such an existence is not identical with an identical kernel of a self or ego of a person(a) (mask).

In Ancient time of Pythagoras and the Chinese and Indian thinker, this procedure was not an abstraction but the genuine and direct way of approaching reality.

In a form, reduced to logocentric purposes, the diamond is well known in the West since Aristotle as the Square of Oppositions, and it had many modern applications in logic (Belnap, Fitting), psychology (Piaget), semiotics (Pierce), linguistics (Greimas), etc. Today general studies of the "Square of Oppositions" are promoted by the Universal Logic group which is running its 2nd World Congress at Xi'an, China.
Obviously, the Diamond Strategies are not excluding such logical studies of the Square but are not to gather under their umbrella.

There are many existential and emotional strategies today to defend ones established attitudes against a new way of thinking and thematizing the world. One is well documented in the Gödel-Günther-Correspondence.
To overcome such barriers, the Diamond Strategies always had been of great help.

Proto-Structure of the Diamond Strategies

Also deconstruction is not simply a method, Derrida gives us some general strategies of deconstruction.

Reversion of hierarchy

"In a traditional philosophical opposition we have not a peaceful coexistence of facing terms but a violent hierarchy. One of the terms dominates the other (axiologically, logically, etc.), occupies the commanding position. To deconstruct the opposition is above all, at a particular moment, to reverse the hierarchy." (Derrida, Positions, 56-57).

The double gesture displacements

"Deconstruction must through a double gesture, a double science, a double writing, put into practice a reversal of the classical opposition and a general displacement of the system. It is that condition alone that deconstruction will provide the means of intervening in the field of oppositions it criticize and which is also a field of non-discursive forces." (Derrida, Marges, 392)

Interestingly, the Diamond Strategies are incorporating both Ancient attitudes:
1. The tetralemmatic and tetractic way of conceiving truth (Buddha, Pythagoras), and
2. the pragmatic or praxeological apraoch of Chinese thinkers to the relevancy of statements as opening futures instead of claiming eternal truth.

Let us play the game of the Diamond Strategies

From the frozen attitudes of our hierarchical thinking and feelings to the endless flow of inventing and co-creating our futures in the open chiasm of systems of multiple opposites.

Step one: Position (Problem, Conflict)
Describe your state or situation of the moment with a good, short but precise statement. It´s your statement of position, affirmation, it´s your starting point of the game.

Question1: What is the situation/constellation you want to explore/re-solve?

Go with your personal starting statement as deep as possible into your emotional and/or cognitive state. Ask yourself about your state formulated in your first starting statement. Elaborate the semantical and emotional context of this statement. Take your last/best sentence of your exploration of your feelings and thinking of your situation and write it down.

Step two: Opposition (Subversion, Solution)
Create the opposite of your state, of your belief statement, of the sentence which describes your situation most concrete.

Question2: What is the opposite of your starting position?

Our language gives us a lot of possibilities to build opposites: logic, grammar, semantics, word games, phonetics, writing, gestures etc. It´s not only negation, you also have inversion of all sorts of order in a sentence or between sentences, dualities, reflections, mirroring and many other methods of translating a statement into it´s opposites.

Example
Position: Nobody loves me.
first opposite: Everybody loves me.
second opposite: Everybody hates me.
third opposite: Everybody loves you.

I would like this one as a nice opposite of "Nobody loves me." :: "I love anybody."

What are the connections between the position and the opposites? You are discovering a Semantic Field of statements between position and its oppositions.

Third step: (neither-nor-): sovereignity
Change between your two states (position vs. opposition). Take position and all feelings for the one, and then take all feelings and surely also all thoughts for the other one.

Question3: What's your neither-nor of position/opposition?

Change and feel what happens when you are changing from position to the opposite. Play this transition game as often until you feel and think that both are equivalent (like light/shadow). Then you will feel immediately that you are free from both: you are not the one and not the other.

You as a subject, as a person you are neither this nor that. This insight and this feeling, that you are not identified with one of the sides of the opposite is your third position. Here you are free, you have the most possible distance to all of the world. Then, how do you see the two other positions, how do you feel them? Go back to the first and to the second. Which do you like most? Play the game until you feel all three positions as equally relevant. All three belongs to you.

Fourth step: all of that at once - pure richness
But this is not all we can do. We can also have the opposite of this distance and sovereignty of the 'neither-nor'. It is the fourth position of 'both-at-once'.
Now you have often changed your positions and you had have very strong feelings and insights in this three positions and transitions. You will discover that all this belongs to you. And not only one after the other but all at once. You are all that at once. You are both position and opposition.

Question4: What is your both-at-once of position/opposition"?

Re-Solution
Then you make the complete trip: you go around the 4 positions in at least 6 primary steps, you have 24 permutations of your primary steps- that's your universe of experience(s) at this very first step within the Diamond Strategies.

Exploration
Each station of the Diamond elaborated serves as a new starting point (Position) for further diamondized explorations of your complex emotional/cognitive space.
With the game of the Diamond Strategies you have deliberated yourself from your fixation on one point of view in describing, reflecting, feeling, deciding, organizing etc. your life, your future of your organization or company.

Opening existential futures: Enabling vs. disabling

All of the four positions of the first Diamond Strategies can be asked about the future possibilities, about their perspectives, about their horizon of new behaviours, etc.
You can ask: What enables me this, which are the new possibilities for me, what new chances are opened up by this state, position etc. for me.

First Step: Enabling vs. disabling
Take one of the 4 positions of the Diamond, then ask one of the questions about enabling/disabling.
1. What is the position enabling/disabling,
2. What is the opposition enabling/disabling,
3. The neither–nor– of enabling and disabling,
„What neither enables nor disables me A?“
4. The both–and– of enabling and disabling,
„What both at once enables and disables me A?“

Second Step: Iterations
You can also freely repeat and alternate your questions about enabling and disabling, thus producing a grid of enabling/disabling positions.

Diamond Strategies of Thematizations

After the more existential application of the Diamond Strategies we are applying them onto the linguistic and grammatological situation of notion/proposition.

Designing the Diamond
A possible Diamond of notion/sentence can be established as:
Notion: name-based conceptualization,
Proposition: proposition-based thinking,
Morphogram: neither name nor proposition,
Inter-textuality: both at once, name and proposition.

Iteration of the Diamond
notion–––>proposition–––>notion

Accretion of the Diamond
proposition as position, new opposition could be text.
morphogram as position, new opposition could be image.
inter-textuality as position, new opposition could be medium.

The diagram shows a possible accretion of the first diamond. There is no strict necessity to develop the diamond this way, other decisions for an interpretation of the knots can enter the game, producing other interpretations of diamonds.

Diamondize vs. Syllogisms
Trees are graphic representations of the notional entailment relation which is at the base of logical thinking, deduction, not restricted to Aristotelian syllogism only.

It is of importance to understand that such an accretion is not building a subordinating order, like a diaeresis, thus, it is not a pattern founding deduction, syllogism and linear or tree-like conceptualization. The knots of this diamond, understood as a proto-structure, can be themselves starting points, origins, for binary trees.

Because of its commutative structure, the graph of the proto-structure is a grid and has neither an origin nor an end. Thus, it might be slightly misleading to write the proto-structure with a beginning (1:1) as it is presented in Gunther’s papers. This happens for notational purpose only.

Neolithic Incisions

2007-03-29T02:43:00.000-07:00

Excursion: Some early orientational systems
At a time of human development, long before the advent of names, notions, sentences and numerals, and images too, there had been incisions, structuring the orientation in the world and co-creatively enabling the advent of human beings.

It is the work of the archeologist Marie König to have discovered those early incisional systems.

Interestingly, most of the basic patterns are at place.
Diamonds, grids, circles, points, and systems of different patterns.
Not necessarily binary trees?

It seems obvious to understand these patterns as cosmic orientation systems. And obviously not being connected to cognitive and linguistic units, like propositions, names, numbers and images, despite their importance, probably, as the very first orientational writing systems.

"Erst die griechischen Naturphilosophen verurteilten die Auswüchse des mythischen Denkens. Sie begannen, ein neues Bild vom Kosmos zu entwerfen und leiteten damit eine neue geistige Entwicklungsstufe ein. Diese Zeit wird gern als der Anfang des europäischen Denkens angesehen, im Gegensatz zum mythischen Denken, das unwissenschaftlich, ungeistig und unrealistisch zu sein schien. Weiter als bis zur Mythologie reichte weder das Gedächtnis der Menschheit noch das Zeugnis der Schriftquellen zurück, und man suchte den Anfang der Kultur dort, wo die Schrift begann, also in den orientalischen Hochkulturen, die in Wirklichkeit einer hochentwickelten geistigen Entwicklungsstufe zuzurechnen sind. Damit verlor unsere Kultur eine Dimension der Tiefe. Wir hatten unseren geschichtlichen Ursprung verloren." (presented by Esther Keller-Stocker) http://www.theologie-vision.eu/bewusst/marie_koenig/koenigII.htm

Marie E.P. König: Am Anfang der Kultur, Die Zeichensprache des frühen Menschen, Gebrüder Mann Verlag Berlin 1973.

["Not until the Greek ancient philosophers condemned the excrescences of mythical thinking. They began to sketch a new picture of the cosmos and introduced with it a new spiritual stage of development. In contrast to the mythical thinking, which seemed to be unscientific, unspiritual and unrealistic, this epoch is regarded gladly as the beginning of European thinking. As up to the mythology neither the memory of mankind nor the testimonial of the sources of writing continued to go back, and one looked for the beginning of culture, where the writing began, thus in Eastern advanced cultures, which in fact are part of a highly developed spiritual stage of development. Thus our culture lost a dimension of profoundness. We had lost our historical origin."]

Chinese Centralism?

2007-03-29T02:18:00.000-07:00

Beyond propositions, names, numbers and advice

"But what has still not been seriously investigated in modern linguistic analysis during the course of secularization of myth, religion, and metaphysics is the increase of secularization on human language. In its insect like persistence, in which it naively supposes that Man and not the universe as a whole is the proper subject of speech and thought, it has completely forgotten God and myth, which both await their metamorphosis." G. Gunther

Summary
The question arises: Is there any rational structure beyond name- and sentence-oriented thinking?
Or: Is there a rational operativity beyond alphabetic sign systems?

In an idealized form, both, name- and sentence-based thinking, are depending structurally on trees. Well known as binary trees of diaeresis or Porphyrian trees. Today as XML trees. The same holds for generalized sign systems, i.e., semiotics. But today, the tree model of organizing knowledge is producing more problems than it solves in complex computing.

Post-modernism has hallucinated the metaphor of net or rhizomatic writing, but didn’t provide any operativity to be useful for real world problems, like programming. Media theorists are fantasizing about the structure of the Web as decentralized, open, complex, heterarchic and not hierarchic at all. They are lost in the chaos of surface-structures, not being able to recognize the strong and strict mathematical centralism and hierarchic organizational order of the Web’s deep-structure.

The acceptance is slowly growing that pre-modern thinking of Pythagoras in the West and Ancient Chinese is neither name nor sentence guided, hence not to be organized by any tree structure. How could such a structure look like? The simplest structuration of Ancient thinking can be supposed as a pre-semiotic proto-structure, realized in history by a triangle model, i.e., a commutative graph, by the Ancient (Pythagoras, Yang Hui, later Blaise Pascal). Each knot of a triangle model is over-determined and therefore logically contradictory.

This structure was re-discovered by the Western thinker Gotthard Gunther for the purpose of mediating number and notion as well as thought and will and exposed in his theory of polycontexturality and kenogrammatics. The proto-structure is offering a devise to distribute and mediate a multitude of binary trees and studying their interactivity and reflectionality in an operative and computable way. A similarity between such a distribution of binary trees over the proto-structure and on the other side, the multitude of spoken Chinese languages and their common scriptural system is proposed.

It is my experience that there are strong existential and emotional defence strategies and barriers which are preventing people from learning about such ways of pre-semiotic thinking. Thus I introduce a format to deal with such anxieties: The Diamond Strategies.
Surprisingly, the Diamond Strategies are in a good correspondence and harmony with Ancient Indian and Chinese formats of thinking and acting as well with Gunther’s concept of proto-structure.

Of the many practical applications possible, only one question is proposed, re-opening a new round of thinking the Chinese Challenge aiming to surpass the common Double Blind Spot:

Can the Chinese Centralism be the same as the Western?

1. Name-oriented languages

Modern linguistics as the study of sign and languages systems in general, has to be separated from the philosophical decisions to focus on certain language interpretations, like the noun-, proposition-, action-oriented understanding of language. The aim of this study is to make some steps toward a reasoning beyond such decisions for propositions and their hierarchy (diaeresis) in favor of a new way of orientation and computation guided understanding of thematization and symbolization by the decision for polycontexturality and kenogrammatics.

Chad Hanson writes about the linguistic analysis of Chinese language by Chinese thinkers.

"Chinese linguistic thought focused on names not sentences."

"This explains the anomaly of treating all terms as 'names,' but fails to explain the similar treatment of adjectives and verbs. Lack of function marking is again part of a possible explanation. Adjectives used in nominal position did not undergo abstract inflection so theorists treated 'red' and 'gold' as analogous. They could associate descriptive adjectives, like mass nouns, with a range or "extension" and view adjectival "names" as distinguishing one range from others. The ranges distinguished by different "names" can overlap. In those cases, they would use compound "names." Distinguishing between the ways adjectives and nouns worked in compounds produced puzzles for pre-Han theorists."

"Zilu said, ‘The ruler of Wei awaits your taking on administration.
What would be master's priority?’ The master replied,
‘Certainly--rectifying names!’ . . . .
If names are not rectified then language will not flow.
If language does not flow, then affairs cannot be completed.
If affairs are not completed, ritual and music will not flourish.
If ritual and music do not flourish, punishments and penalties will miss their mark.
When punishments and penalties miss their mark, people lack the wherewithal to control hand and foot.
Hence a gentleman's words must be acceptable to vocalize and his language must be acceptable as action.
A gentleman's language lacks anything that misses--period.(13:3)"
http://www.hku.hk/philodep/ch/lang.htm

A chain of terms is build: rectification/names –> language –> ritual/music –>
punishment/penalties –> control
==> acceptance of vocalization/action.

This chain of terms, from rectifying names to the acceptance of vocalization and action, suggests a linear and hierarchic order of entailments. There are no chiastic elements or relations involved. But there is also no system mentioned in which the hierarchic development takes place. Thus, it is open to interpretations.

Cyclic and chiastic order
If, on the other side, it is said, that "war becomes peace and peace becomes war" (Confucius, Heraklit) a cyclic and chiastic (dialectic) order is established. What is basic in this approach are not the names and notions involved but the rules of the interplay between them. This chiastic model, even still archaic, is neither sentence- nor notion-based. The change, the differences of the play are primary to the notions involved. Because of its chiastic form, the whole statement is in itself also not strictly a sentence or proposition in the definitional sense. Because a sentence is based on the hierarchy of subject and predicate.

Chiastic forms are circular, violating the hierarchy of propositions. Thus, the operator "and" is not simply a logical or linguitic conjunction but a term for mediation between the two order relations between war and peace. There is no reason to thematize chiastic formations as name-based. This change as such is neither name- nor proposition-based, but a chiastic interplay between the terms.
In the terminology of polycontextural logic, this situation is modeled by the proemial relationship.

2. Thought, will and numbers

Name/proposition/contexture or sign vs. kenogram
Before the digitalists have overtaken Western ideology, the philosophical trend of the "linguistic turn" was dominating the theory of science as "analytic" philosophy. Sentence, statement, proposition, etc. based thinking was confronted to noun/name/notion-based thinking. Their conclusion was, the one who is not opting for propositions is poised to be stuck in the archaic name-oriented approach.
Gödel and Gunther didn’t decide for the linguistic turn. Nor had they been lost in the past of name-oriented disorientation.

Now, it is said, that Ancient Chinese thinking is not sentence-based, thus it has to be noun-based; TND. "Chinese linguistic thought focused on names not sentences." Contextures and even more, kenograms, are not involved into this logocentric game of names and sentences. Not even in texts and contexts, and their inter-textuality as it was introduced and studied mainly by the French structuralists and deconstructivists.
Kenograms and morphograms are understood as patterns of actions. In Günther’s words, they are the general "Codex für Handlungsvollzüge".

Ancient pragmatic advise: Tetraktys as a device
Like Chinese thinking, Pythagorean thinking was action-oriented and not concerned with the eternal truth (of axiomatic systems). Action-orientation is not simply the pragmatic dimension of logocentric sign systems.

The Pythagorean tetraktys was not primarily a concept but a device: to do the tetraktys, i.e., to tetraktomai. To tetraktomai is to produce the grid of the proto-structure. The tetraktys doesn’t stop with the number 4, it starts with it. But in ancient time, there was no theory of action but material advices for a better life, only. Learnable in secret schools from teachers or from Guru’s.
Today, advices have to become programs to compute new chances in a changing world.

Yang Hui (楊輝, c. 1238 - c. 1298)

http://www.roma.unisa.edu.au/07305/pascal.htm

Pascal Triangle:
http://www.csam.montclair.edu/~kazimir/construction.html

Gotthard Gunther's Proto-structure
http://www.vordenker.de/ggphilosophy/gg_life_as_polycontexturality.pdf
http://www.vordenker.de/ggphilosophy/gg_identity-neg-language_biling.pdf

Hierarchy and heterarchy of thinking and action
Occidental philosophy is mainly thought-orientated. Thoughts are represented in statements and statements are represented in written sentences. Then, on the base of sentences, action can happen. Thus, scripturality is secondary. In other words, thoughts in established Western philosophy are first, will comes second. But Western technology is on the way to turn this hierarchic order into an action-based paradigm. Until now, this inversion happens proposition-based, i.e., the logic of action and programming is still the logic of propositions. This happens in different forms, sometimes hiding its logocentric origin, like with the lambda calculus.
There is no reason to belief that a simple inversion of the hierarchic order is of any real help. Both systems are more or less isomorphic and are building a symmetric dualism. There is not much research to observe which would intend to change this situation of semiotic based hierarchy.

Chinese thought, it was said, is action-based. But as we have shown often enough, this paradigm of action is not based on the same world-model as the Western sentence-based. The crucial asymmetry between the Chinese writing system and its linguistics are building the deep-structure of its action based paradigm. Hence it would be a serious mismatch to identify both concepts, the Chinese and the Western concept of action.
But Chinese thinking has not yet considered to formalize the heterarchic operative structure of its writing system. We can say, the West achieved to formalize its phonologic writing system to the highest perfection. The results are now propagated globally as the ultimate ratio and universal truth.

3. Diaeresis on Proto-Structures

Logic systems distributed over the proto-structure.
Linguistic and logical structure of diaeresis: genus proximum/differentia specifica.
Up and down; the same. (Diels)

But the conceptual use of the triangle is in strict conflict to the binary structure of diaeresis.
The way up and the way down have not to coincide.
Diaeresis is applicable to both approaches, the sentence- and the notion-based.

Different numeric interpretations of the proto-structure
The abstractness of the grid enables not only different notional or symbolic interpretations but is also serving for different numeric calculations. The closest numeric interpretation of the proto-structure is given by the fact of the number of the knots of the grid. This corresponds exactly to the Pythagorean numeric interpretation of the proto-structure. In contrast to the number of knots in the dyadic tree of the Platonic diaeresis, which corresponds the series of 1, 3, 6, 10, ... , the Pythagorean series of knots corresponds to 1, 3, 7, ... Thus differing at position 3 with 6≠7.

Plato’s Diaeresis onto Gunther’s Proto-Structure
Strictly separated diaeresis systems, i.e., binary trees, localized at their common proto-structure, are offering communication as semiotic morphisms (Joseph Goguen) between them. Overlapping diaeresis systems are producing conflicts in communication because the may hide the lack of a common history. At the point where communication seems to be realized, mismatches are produced and their reasons are hidden as blind spots. That is, the semiotic isomorphisms between the different diaeretic systems can not be established because they are violating the condition of separation.
Both diaeretic or semiotic systems have to be disjunct in respect of their elements to enable conversation between autonomous partners. Only if the overlapping can be reduced to an overlapping of the full trees, the conflict is resolved in coincidence. An overlapping of knots (terms) does not mean that the terms have the same meaning. Simply because they are defined by different notional backgrounds (histories).

Diaeresis, binary trees and proto-structure
From Plato’s hierarchic pyramids, Porphyries notion-trees to the tree structure of XML. Trees, everywhere. Diaeresis is not an esoteric structure or an ancient and obsolete method of organizing knowledge. In its form as binary trees it has become a nearly universal method of thinking, computing and organizing knowledge and actions.
But with trees we are getting into trouble. It is also not enough to have forests of trees instead of a general tree. Even the trees in a forest may play some kind of multitude, there are no mechanisms at all to realize interaction and reflection between trees. What’s between trees is not itself a tree.

Different trees can be mapped onto the proto-structural grid. Gunther has given some examples of binary trees on proto-structures with different origins and common overlapping at proto-structural places. This can be freely extended to overlapping of binary trees, not only on common proto-structural places but at overlapping places of the trees themselves.
Gunther’s table VII shows, in black, trees with different origins and proto-structural overlapping. The added red tree is overlapping with another tree, in black, additionally at common proto-structural places. The black tree is producing a differentiation of 3 decisions to meet the red tree which has at the common places realized a differentiation of only 2 decisions.

As a first step to escape the hierarchy of thinking and will, a chiasm between both has to be established. That is, a distribution and mediation of the thought/will relationship has to be installed. This, as a second step, is possible only on the base of non-propositional, non-semiotic deep-structures which are offering a grid to place the thought/will relationship over different loci. The tree-structure of diaeresis corresponds to the rational thinking, the placement of the tree in the proto-structure is not itself a cognition but a volitional decision.

Interactions of trees onto the proto-structure
In this constellation, Table VII, there are, for the red tree, 7 overlapping situations and 8 non-overlappings of the total of 15 possibilities of the red tree. The black tree, with its different origin has a longer "history". With its 31 situations, only 7 are overlapping together with the red tree. Thus, the harmony of coincidence is not balanced. The red tree has only 8 "free" positions, while the black tree has 24, thus, having a more complex "history".

Interestingly, the overlapping of the red tree with the black tree at the 7 situations is based on a "history" of nil common situations. What is common to both is their being distributed over the proto-structural grid and their meeting at 7 common situations. This is the global analysis.

A focus on the local constellations/situations has to consider the equality of the common positions in their locality. That is, both arrived at those locations and from a local point of view it doesn’t matter how they arrived and from where. Not enough, there is even another binary tree in the game. Its origin is located at another position. Both, the red and the black tree, are involved in proto-structural overlappings with this second (black) tree.

Double Blind Spot
With only a one-step move of the root of the red tree, a fully harmonic overlapping results, with a base, again, of nil common positions. This kind of overlapping is locally suggesting full harmony; globally, it is maximal under-balanced producing the possibility of highest mismatch. Because there is no common "history" realized by the different trees, what seems to be harmonic coincidence can turn out to be a mismatch. They are also blind for the fact of being positioned in a proto-structural grid. This kind of overlapping should be called a Double Blind Spot. Probably the conditio humane of actual inter-cultural communications.

4. Is Chinese centralism the same as the Western?

"Modern society is a polycentric, polycontextural system. (…) Consequently there must be transjunctional operations, which make it possible to go from one contexturality into another, still marking which differentiation is accepted or rejected for specific operations."
(Luhmann 1996).
http://www.qvortrup.info/lq/pdf-misc/Hypercomplex.pdf

The multitude of Chinese spoken languages can be seen as a distribution over the uniqueness of the Chinese writing system. This is not only a multitude of different interpretations of a character in the sense of a polysemy of meanings, but the different interpretations are offered by the hieroglyphs the space to be distributed. Thus, different languages incorporating different points of view are mediated by the uniqueness of the hieroglyphic writing system.
Such a system is poly-centric and polycontextural, not only in a linguistic sense but also politically, economically and culturally. With each spoken language, or with each contexture established, the speaker will follow, ideally, the logical structure of diaeresis and its principle of tertium non datur (TND).
Therefore, it is reasonable to think of a distribution of different diaeretic systems mediated by their common written background or hieroglyphic deep-structure of the writing system.

"Polycentrism characterizes a society that cannot observe itself or its environment from a single observational position–or, rather, from within a single observational perspective or “optics”–but has to employ a large number of positions of observation, each using its own individual observational code to manage its own social complexity. This implies that no universal point of observation can be found. Furthermore, this means that a large portion of these observations are observations of observations:[...]." ibd.

It is obvious, that a similar mediation of different spoken languages, like in the Chinese case, is not accessible for Europeans. If a Norwegian and a Catalan person or administration want to communicate, they don’t have, despite their common general European culture, a common system of linguistic or semiotic reference.
Today, this problem of communication is basic for the development of a Semantic Web (Web 3.0). The hope for a solution is found in a common general ontology/taxonomy which is denying all the historic and cultural differences between the different European languages. Such Semantic Web activities are in favor for machine-readability. It further turns out that the concept of European polycentrism is a myth proposed in a notional format, lacking any operativity; supporting in practice by necessity strict political and juridical centralism.

It is said, that we have not to be slaves of our historic writing systems. We can think against their restrictional tendencies. Yes, with which tools? And are not the tools determining our results?

Today, all sorts of narratives about complexity, interactivity, mediation, autonomy and self-organization are on the market. But to talk and write about a topic is not to produce an operational calculus able to master it.

Thus, after the introduction of these grammatological exercises, and to escape the common Double Blind Spot, the question naturally arises:

Can Chinese centralism be the same as Western centralism?

A little typology

2007-02-15T10:50:00.000-08:00

Writing and world models

The little typology of writing paradigms is confronted with the "Diagrams of the 4 World-Models". The 4 world-models are modeling the 4 possible configurations between rationality and reality or logics and worlds. A correspondence between the 4 paradigms of writing and the 4 world-models may be established. Each subject is realizing the spirit/mind/speech/writing/reality relation, i.e., its reality/rationality or world/logic relation in a specific world model.
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/media/SKIZZE-0.9.5-Prop-book.pdf

Phonologism of Western Writing
This is the scheme of a logocentric understanding of writing. It corresponds to the dominant tradition of Western philosophy and linguistics. But there are no surprises to observe that this scheme holds in a similar way in other cultures, too.

Aristotle, On Interpretation:
“Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience
and written words are the symbols of spoken words”.

Hegel writes in his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, Part III: The Philosophy of Spirit (1830)
"Alphabetic writing is on all accounts the more intelligent: in it the word ą the mode, peculiar to the intellect, of uttering its ideas most worthily ą is brought to consciousness and made an object of reflection." http://www.thinkartlab.com/CCR/2006/08/alphabetism_29.html

World model I: One world one logic

So: transcendental subject, Ultimate Universal Logic, not accessible to empirical subjects.
Oo: transcendental object, Ultimate Eternal Reality, not accessible to empirical subjects.
Si: empirical subjects.
Oi: empirical realities.

One sentence :: one meaning
Perfectly realized by normed alphabetism. Isomorphism between written sentence and its meaning. Sentences are thought as names of objects (entities). This is the position of realism and platonism.

Semantic truth condition (Tarski):
correspondence between meaning and reality.

Grammatology of Chinese Writing
This scheme corresponds to the Chinese understanding of writing as it is exposed by Liu Hsieh. There are similarities in the pre-Aristotelian tradition of Plato and Pythagoras to find. http://www.thinkartlab.com/CCR/2006/10/liu-hsiehs-grammatology.html

Gotthard Gunther
"That is, in holding to the ideograms, lies an unconscious insight of a massive asymmetry between spoken and written language. It is the written language, on which a main culture rests. It possesses an identity strength, which stands out clearly against the identity weakness of the spoken word." http://www.thinkartlab.com/CCR/2006/09/gnthers-asymmetry.html

World model II: Many worlds one logic

Many sentences :: one meaning
Situation of the interpretation of Chinese hieroglyphs by negotiation. Hieroglyphs are unifying many sentences in one scriptural pattern. The hieroglyphs have a mediating function to the plurality of interpretative sentences. Such sentences are not isolated and unrelated to each other. The model of thinking is not dominated by the concept of sentences or names. But by the written hieroglyphs which have to be interpreted. Thus, this model is relational and focussed on the interplay between writing and speech. But this interplay between scriptural and interpretational activities is not yet itself inscribed (conceptualized and formalized). It is realized in practise of communication in the Lebenswelt.

Actional truth condition:
True, iff accepted by all negotional partners involved.

Graphematics of Chinese Writing
The graphematical model of writing is emphazing the practical aspect of schematic work in form of the computation by an abacus. This is in strict contrast to the still "logos" related writing of the grammatological model. Hence, this scheme is considering the influence of technological and cultural practise on the paradigm of writing. The emphasis is on the influence of the usage of the Abacus on reality and on the concept of literal and algebraic writing. It is thought that the development of the concept of zero and the organizational system of positionality is an interpretation of the practice of the usage of the Abacus in calculations. Hence, techniques of computations have influenced the general structure of writing. Especially the invention of the concept and notation of zero.
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/lola/Abacus.pdf

World model III: One world many logics

One sentence :: many meanings

Polysemy of sentences solved by modal logic of alphabetism. Sentences are deliberated from their fixation to names. They have different meanings depending on different contexts which are themselves defined by sentences. Thus a kind of circularity is involved. This is the position of constructivism and relativism.

Model theoretic truth condition (Kripke):
True, iff true in all contexts.

Morphogrammatics and Polycontexturality
Proemiality of scriptural and hermeneutic procedures.
The mind is strongly embedded into reality. Reality is reflected by the minds activity of writing, speech and interaction. The mind is part of the technology of human activity. Human activity is embedded into reality.
http://www.thinkartlab.com/CCR/2006/10/blog-post_07.html

World model IV: Dissemination

The hegemony of one world and one logic is destroyed and disseminated over a multitude of loci constituting a new world containing both, the rationality and the reality in it. The focus is on the distribution and mediation of the disseminated origins.

http://www.thinkartlab.com/CCR/2006/09/temporal-structures-in-chinese.html

World model IV: Rejection

The hegemony of the origins is rejected and destroyed. But the focus is on its rejection and destruction, i.e, on the autonomy of the different rationality/reality relations and not on their mediation and localization inside a new world model like in the constellation of rejection.

The structural properties of the fourth world model is principally different from the 3 other world models. In contrast to them, it can not be modeled by one and only one model. Its model is paradoxical, over-determined, ambiguous and dynamic.
World model IV has space to place the 3 other models of writing/meaning in itself.
http://www.thinkartlab.com/CCR/2006/10/semiotics-to-morphogrammatics.html

Many sentences :: many meanings
The plurality of sentences and meanings is not dispersed in isolated units but mediated to a compound structure of writing and interpretation. The interplay and chiasm between writing and meaning is primary. It is realized as interactional and reflectional activities between script and meaning on the base of a tabular conception of notational systems. This actional understanding of writing and meaning is dynamic, complex, open for its history and future.
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/lola/Godel_Games-short.pdf

Table of models

[click on the picture to enlarge ]