ONT Re: Information = Comprehension x Extension -- Discussion
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ICE. Discussion Note 36
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this way to the e-gress ...
re: ICE Discuss 35. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg05325.html
in: ICE Discuss. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/thrd1.html#05274
yes, i remember the story. i once had the occasion to ask borges
a couple of questions about it, in the question and answer session
after a reading that he gave at my alma mater in the early seventies.
or maybe it was another story, but very reminiscent in theme or motif.
the man who introduced him mentioned that borges "hated puns", because
they depended for their effects on the accidents of language rather than
revealing the essence of their ideas. i'll bet you can guess what i asked.
well, i was saving that for david letterman's "brush with greatness" segment,
but i guess the global brain gong show will be prime time enough for for me.
at any rate, or fluxion, depending on your sympathies,
i suspect that "tzinican" is a quasinym for leibniz,
who seems to have had a remarkably similar vision:
cf: DET 1. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/msg02377.html
in: DET. http://suo.ieee.org/ontology/thrd58.html#02377
| Now that I have proved sufficiently that everything
| comes to pass according to determinate reasons, there
| cannot be any more difficulty over these principles
| of God's foreknowledge. Although these determinations
| do not compel, they cannot but be certain, and they
| foreshadow what shall happen.
|
| It is true that God sees all at once the whole sequence
| of this universe, when he chooses it, and that thus he
| has no need of the connexion of effects and causes in
| order to foresee these effects. But since his wisdom
| causes him to choose a sequence in perfect connexion,
| he cannot but see one part of the sequence in the other.
|
| It is one of the rules of my system of general harmony,
| 'that the present is big with the future', and that he
| who sees all sees in that which is that which shall be.
|
| What is more, I have proved conclusively that God sees in
| each portion of the universe the whole universe, owing to
| the perfect connexion of things. He is infinitely more
| discerning than Pythagoras, who judged the height of
| Hercules by the size of his footprint. There must
| therefore be no doubt that effects follow their
| causes determinately, in spite of contingency
| and even of freedom, which nevertheless exist
| together with certainty or determination.
|
| Gottfried Wilhelm (Freiherr von) Leibniz,
|'Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God,
| the Freedom of Man, and the Origin of Evil',
| Edited with an Introduction by Austin Farrer,
| Translated by E.M. Huggard from C.J. Gerhardt's
| Edition of the 'Collected Philosophical Works',
| 1875-1890. Routledge 1951. Open Court 1985.
| Paragraph 360, page 341.
oh, i had meant to tell you, there's an excellent collection
of online writings by and about peirce at the arisbe website:
http://members.door.net/arisbe/
e-joy!
jon awbrey
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Hugh Trenchard wrote:
>
> Speaking of "contrary evidence", I digress momentarily.
> Peirce's description of indivisible logical "atoms"
> reminds me of Jorge Luis Borges' story, the
> God's Script.
>
> In this story, Tzinican, a man imprisoned, passes the time by attempting
> to decipher the "god's script" in the spots of a jaguar in an adjacent cell.
>
> He considers "that even in the human languages there is no proposition that
> does not imply the entire universe; to say *the tiger* is to say the tigers
> that begot it, the deer and turtles devoured by it, the grass on which the
> deer fed, the earth that was mother to the grass, the heaven that gave
> birth to the earth ..."
>
> So it seems in Tzinican's philosophy every term implies an infinity
> of extensions. The blind man to whom the word "red" is communicated,
> may infer infinite extensions and therefore recieves infinite information.
> So paradoxically, it seems every word is not only infinitely divisible, but,
> being infinite, implies absolute information apprehension -- of everything,
> I suppose.
>
> This is the fictional world of Borges of course,
> but might amount to "contrary evidence" if one is
> predisposed to subscribing to Tzinican's philosophy.
>
> Now that I've got that off my chest, please proceed ...
>
> Hugh Trenchard
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http://www.cs.bsu.edu/homepages/mighty/history.html
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