CREATEDATE = 11/19/99 6:59 PM
JH says: actions & interactions determine “state,” the current condition of something, especially the condition of a complex system;
"Transition rules" determine actions, i.e., which action will occur [or be taken] next; the components or agents that compose the system act according to those rules.
Me: All of the above presumes that action occurs. Thus, a question: Where does this action come from? From what does action itself emerge? Or does it emerge at all?
Me: Math makes a presumption at its root. It presumes, prior even to its postulates, a notion I call particularity; the sense of ‘particle-ness.’ The fundamental identity function A=A expresses the presumption of ‘thing-ness’ by saying a this IS itself. No doubt this springs from a kind of mindset that began as a useful, practical recognition of phenomena that exhibited indistinct but noticeable boundaries. A hurricane has no sharp edge yet does appear as a ‘whole.’ Thus a practical acceptance of the hurricane phenomena becomes accepted as an object rather than an event. Sufficient physics work exists to suggest that atoms and their components might be phenomena rather than things.
So instead of presuming particularity or ‘thing-ness,’ let us presume action as the fundamental level of all that exists. The fundamental postulate, then, requires a statement something like “Action acts” [not far removed from ‘shit happens’]
Action carries a lot of unsorted baggage because no one has challenged the presumption that particularity is more fundamental than action.
... Dan Alford Moonhawk reports the Navajo language is a “processy” language as opposed to our ‘thing-y’ Western languages [Engl., Ger., etc.]
... [related old 1977 thoughts] Behaviorism presumes behavior; that is, the science postulates action without cause ... little better [logically] than the outdated notion of spontaneous generation of life.
08/08/2000 3:01 PM Math’s error, then is simply that it fails to specify it’s presumption of particularity, and its corollary presumption that such particularity takes precedence over action & activeness as the fundamental notion upon which to base an understanding of the universe.