P-world and R-world

In this article, the consequences of transparency in public life are considered. It appears that money revels the collective nature of the system. Lawfulness appears in behavior, but that lawfulness requires us to posit a limited sort of an individual. Essentially selfish, but with a limited notion of self. Revealing our collective side, once again. Brains drive those smaller units, as they generate P-worlds. Consensus will be of our common nature, and not of that which is first person.

This argument has to be worked out in some more detail, but in essence, given my claims about the match between the phenomenal world and the nervous system/organism, it is clear that one might develop a probe of ones self by exposure to stochastic stimuli: like listening to static. But unstructured noise, like static is not rich. Entrails, and tarot cards, and such, are uniformly very rich in structure, albeit without any additional forcing of interpretation. Thus it is not too surprising that they can serve as sounding boards for reading oneself, to find out what is latent within oneself, but not otherwise triggered by the environment.

In a similar vein, the interpretation of coincidences may prove to be a useful technique. Coincidences are important for illustrating what it is that the subject sees. In this way, the world is the sounding board.

More on this anon.

I have been re-engaging with a bit of theory.

When we find any unmistakably periodic behavior from an organism, one sensible theory is that something is oscillating to control that behavior. (Bob Port)

I need to consider why this is important. What is it that is oscillating? The undamped oscillator of task dynamics is a hack. That’s not a good enough description. But the maths gets hairy when you get more complex.

First, since the theory specifies attractors in terms of phase angle,
we expect that at least for moderate changes in rate (that is, changes
in the duration of the repetition cycle), the attractors should be
unaffected in terms of phase but vary in direct proportion with cycle
duration.

My stance here would be to shun the notion of control, and recognize that periodic system behavior is simply a  common form of viable, stable self-organized behavior.  It needs no controller, and indeed, it makes no sense if there is a controller.  It only makes sense because this is how simple systems, each with some autonomy, will couple.

One of my favourite metaphors for the individual is as a locus, through which ideas pass. This is fundamentally at odds with the received notion of the individual as a repository of memories. If the memories you have are inextricably linked to the situations, places, and scenes you find yourself in, is that not being the kind of thing that resonates in a particular way rather than being a storehouse of some set of .. well, if you believe in memories, then you believe in responses. A vast set of responses. In insisting on the autonomy of the individual, one insists that the interaction between you and a place is somehow frozen? I guess I don’t understand the idea of memory.