γ |
being heard |
experience and perception
Every BEING is an element in an environment, recognizing and understanding others by their signs. In whatever form then CONVERSATIONS unavoidably follow, gathering together communities of mutual interest and dependency.
Survival and meaning-making — life and BIOSEMIOSIS — are co-extensive. Billions of years ago a CONVERSATIONs between different BEINGS fused them together, and from the cells that resulted our species evolved. CONVERSATION made our primate tribes the world for us. Today, it still orchestrates our rise and fall.
Societies are fundamental. Constructed by both allies and predators, they are the builder of complex organisms and their means of survival. For those in our kingdom, they are the focus of our environments, providing the frame of meaning through which our ontogenies develop. Our bodies themselves are societies; we evolved as the co-operatives of our cells rather than as the dictatorships of our brains, and only half of the cells in my body have my DNA — the other half are bacteria, without which I would struggle to survive. In actuality, I is a unique alliance, of both animal and bacterial cells, my identity, an instance of the essential emergent quality of my BEING.
Human beings are spatially and temporally limited parts of the whole that we call "universe"; yet we experience ourselves and our feelings as separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness.
footnotes of n_Einstein_Translation.php included in entryNote.php, e_Einstein_HumanDelusion.php, and e_personalMeta.php.
Einstein wrote the above (bold emphasis added), in ink, in a note now held in the Albert Einstein Archives, Jerusalem. The edit I have made is of the translation, written in another hand, that appears underneath them.
There were several reasons for editing that translation — to reflect the gender neutrality of the German more consistently; to echo Einstein's use of the words, delusion, and, illusion; and to better reflect the certitude of the note's opening argument, carried in the brevity of the German yet somehow absent in the translation on the note itself. In the end, the edit below, supported by translations by Google on 6 March 2024, is only a minor edit of it:
The translation, in pencil on the original note, became the text of the condolence letter sent from Einstein to Dr. Marcus on 12 February 1950. The first two sentences of it were then used to open the letter of condolence sent on the 4 March 1950 to Norman Salt.
delusions and illusions
Einstein spoke the refined German of the Bildungsbürgertum, a language characterized by its precision. It might the be reasonable to assume, as an inspection of Einstein's note also suggests, that his use of the word Täuschung (delusion) twice and Illusion once, was considered not careless.
Etymologically the word delusion implies an action, a deceiving, referring here to that suffered by human beings through our consciousness, through which we perceive a deceptive appearance, the illusion of being "separated from the rest".
Although I believe that translations I have found are faithful to the originals, stripped of their context, quotations can lose much of their quality. Transliteration of punctuation, for instance, can result in an English that makes their authors sound coarse or uneducated; and 'grammatical transliterations' may substitute gender bias for the gender neutrality in an original.
Where I have edited translations it has been only in order to address issues of punctuation, prosody, and inference, that I found detracted from the content of the originals. The edits have been made with due diligence, and although I am not a professional translator or writer, I believe they are faithful, and required to make the fluency, erudition, and sensibility of the originals explicit — original texts are provided so readers may draw their own conclusions.
Footnote {delusion01a} of n_Einstein_Translation.php.
Life intrinsically is not about codes but about connecting with an environment that is social as much as material. communicating is not merely an aspect of our genes it is their function. Despite our awareness and its self-interest in survival, from our very first moment, like the birds in the trees we call out. Although being heard as often calls diners as dinner, calling-out reveals what is good for us as well as 'who' is not. communication not only drives our development psychologically and culturally but also our evolution biologically.
4.1. In their ontogeny children learn to communicate with their environment. Their experiences aggregate and form a cultural framework that then supports, and also constrains, their development. 4.2. Like those of other animals, our young are driven to seize the powers adults have, co-operating and competing with them as they do with each other. Whatever they may be taught, they build on what they experience; mimicking it, and trying it on for size. 4.3. Through the cultural frame of their ontogeny, children learn to recognize and distinguish between relations — those with whom it is easy to empathize, and others, individuals of species and groups with whom that feels impossible.
5.1. The course of evolution has proved society to be life's best defence. 5.2. Driven by the comfort of inclusion and fear of exclusion, beings engage with others and accommodate their differences. 5.3. To find our place in a society, and to be accepted, our perceptions of touch, taste, sound, and sight, of emotion and thought, are constructed by adapting to the environment in which we are conceived. 5.4. The value of a being and the meaning it has to a society are determined not by its intentions but by its expressions..
6.1. Conceived in a being's intentions, meaning only lives in its perception. It is not intrinsic to words. Words are just midwives for it. 6.2. beings uniquely perceive and express meaning in every kind of sign, from light to sound, through forms and shapes. 6.3. Ambiguity is intrinsic to natural languages — it only kills machine codes. If it had been otherwise, over the millions of years it would have simply vanished. Although ambiguity hides deceit, the examination fostered by extended conversation is the only defence against that; and so it serves to shepherd beings closer together. 6.4. Text is a technological representation of natural language, a simulacrum and reduction of it. The apparent clarity of it, and of rhetoric, its verbal form, disguises ambiguity, and removes the defence of extended, synchronous conversation.
7.1. As our species focused on signs and symbols, new media developed. From handprints on cave walls to theatre, text, and photography, an industry of broadcasting evolved. 7.2. By filtering information and mediating individual choice, broadcasting, by increasingly orchestrating conversation, has transformed social intercourse. 7.3. Individuals now, adapting to interactively broadcasted social-media (IBSM), are gathered together behind screens as nodes in a multi-dimensional web of virtual societies. 7.4. The neural networks of IBSM function as ecosystems, infospheres constructed through a propaganda of the everyday; the cognition and behaviours of their individuals adapting as they develop within their new environments.
BEINGS PERCEIVE patterns and signs reflexively. As a consequence, societies and languages emerge. On being heard the environment gave birth. Life coextends with MEANING. In the beginning was the word. Just not one that we recognize.
8.1. conversations construct not only virtual environments but also those that provide for our physical needs. 8.2. By building that common sense in which we feel safe and at home, conversations assemble us into societies and cultures. 8.3. Through adapting to the social frames our conversations construct our minds develop, our psychological needs met in proportion to the success of this.
Δ making sense λ literal error
from the poem: Ulysses, by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
>from: Venus in Furs, by Ritter von Leopold Sacher-Masoch, tranlated by Fernanda Savage, p.36/101.
signification
Signs and symbols were written about by Aristotle and Plato — signs in the world of nature and symbols in human culture — symbols, such as numbers, letters, words etc, are now considered a type of sign, signifying through arbitrary conventions rather than through any direct relationship with what is signified.
The greek word, semio-, means a sign. The ending, -sis, of semio-sis, and BIOSEMIO-SIS, is equivalent in English to -ing, translating them literally then as sign-ing, sign-action, or signification. Anything, when RECOGNIZED, is a SIGN of what is RECOGNIZED, and the process through which it is RECOGNIZED then is BIOSEMIOSIS.
Viruses and bacteria have no use for words; nonetheless, they perceive their environment and those within it and respond accordingly — physically; chemically, and otherwise. The CONVERSATIONS they then generate, create relationships that arguably are much more substantial than those that we create are.
Fluency, is generally limited to describing dexterity of verbal expression; however FLUENCY here refers to EXPRESSION in general, and in particular to its aptness, in its environmental FRAME, for the communicative goals of the MEANING that informed it,.
BIOSEMIOSIS is recursive. It enables BEINGS to generate MEANING by aligning their PERCEPTION of current SENSATION, with what they can RECOGNIZE from MEANING previously EMBODIED in them by themselves or through inheritance. ENDOSEMIOSIS and EXOSEMIOSIS then refer to EXPRESSIONS that respond to the RECOGNITION of MEANING, ENDOSEMIOSIS to that in EMBODIED NOUMENA and EXOSEMIOSIS to that in external NOUMENA.
BIOSEMIOSIS is recursive. It enables BEINGS to generate MEANING by aligning their PERCEPTION of current SENSATION, with what they can RECOGNIZE from MEANING previously EMBODIED in them by themselves or through inheritance. ENDOSEMIOSIS and EXOSEMIOSIS then refer to EXPRESSIONS that respond to the RECOGNITION of MEANING, ENDOSEMIOSIS to that in EMBODIED NOUMENA and EXOSEMIOSIS to that in external NOUMENA.
MEANING, refers here to that which a BEING PERCEIVES of the EXPRESSIONS of NOUMENA. Developed and encoded through the FRAME of an individual's ONTOGENY, MEANING is inheritable.
A metatransition is a metasystem transition to EITHER a more complex OR a simpler structure, ultimately leading to a transitory OR a permanent evolutionary transition in individuality.
Here, metasystem refers to a general, rather than to a restricted, controlling or organizational system which maintains the homeostasis necessary for the functioning of a system and its subsystems.
It is as correct or incorrect to say that hormones create love as it is to say that love creates hormones. Love is not definable in the way that hormones are; they are terms in different reference frames.
signification
Signs and symbols were written about by Aristotle and Plato — signs in the world of nature and symbols in human culture — symbols, such as numbers, letters, words etc, are now considered a type of sign, signifying through arbitrary conventions rather than through any direct relationship with what is signified.
The greek word, semio-, means a sign. The ending, -sis, of semio-sis, and BIOSEMIO-SIS, is equivalent in English to -ing, translating them literally then as sign-ing, sign-action, or signification. Anything, when RECOGNIZED, is a SIGN of what is RECOGNIZED, and the process through which it is RECOGNIZED then is BIOSEMIOSIS.
Noumenon, is a Greek word meaning "that which is perceived". It is the word Kant used to identify the thing-in-itself, the underlying reality that is then recognized by an observer as a SIGN.
NOUMENA may function as SIGNS of themselves — as rocks, or holes, or hands, etc.; as qualities these are associated with — food, green, danger, etc.; or as things distinct from themselves — a woman: a mother; a sound: a river, a phoneme or "Mum!"; a mark: a word, or a symbol, like pi, or a photograph or a drawing of a pie or a pipe.
Kant referred to recognition of the thing-in-itself as perception but, PERCEPTION, is used here to label one of the four processes in BIOSEMIOSIS that are bootstrapped by RECOGNITION
The entire sequence of events involved in the development of an individual BEING over its lifespan.
ontology, [onto- an individual BEING, -logy an account, to tell or speak], refers here not to metaphysical philosophy but to the METABIOLOGY of a BEING.
MEANING here refers not to the output or conclusion of a human mind or cognitive function, but to the motivation that is founded by LIFE and learning.
footnotes of n_Einstein_Translation.php included in entryNote.php, e_Einstein_HumanDelusion.php, and e_personalMeta.php.
Einstein wrote the above (bold emphasis added), in ink, in a note now held in the Albert Einstein Archives, Jerusalem. The edit I have made is of the translation, written in another hand, that appears underneath them.
There were several reasons for editing that translation — to reflect the gender neutrality of the German more consistently; to echo Einstein's use of the words, delusion, and, illusion; and to better reflect the certitude of the note's opening argument, carried in the brevity of the German yet somehow absent in the translation on the note itself. In the end, the edit below, supported by translations by Google on 6 March 2024, is only a minor edit of it:
The translation, in pencil on the original note, became the text of the condolence letter sent from Einstein to Dr. Marcus on 12 February 1950. The first two sentences of it were then used to open the letter of condolence sent on the 4 March 1950 to Norman Salt.
delusions and illusions
Einstein spoke the refined German of the Bildungsbürgertum, a language characterized by its precision. It might the be reasonable to assume, as an inspection of Einstein's note also suggests, that his use of the word Täuschung (delusion) twice and Illusion once, was considered not careless.
Etymologically the word delusion implies an action, a deceiving, referring here to that suffered by human beings through our consciousness, through which we perceive a deceptive appearance, the illusion of being "separated from the rest".
Although I believe that translations I have found are faithful to the originals, stripped of their context, quotations can lose much of their quality. Transliteration of punctuation, for instance, can result in an English that makes their authors sound coarse or uneducated; and 'grammatical transliterations' may substitute gender bias for the gender neutrality in an original.
Where I have edited translations it has been only in order to address issues of punctuation, prosody, and inference, that I found detracted from the content of the originals. The edits have been made with due diligence, and although I am not a professional translator or writer, I believe they are faithful, and required to make the fluency, erudition, and sensibility of the originals explicit — original texts are provided so readers may draw their own conclusions.
Footnote {delusion01a} of n_Einstein_Translation.php.
science
Science is an elementary practice. Scientism is a belief. Eugenics and the Holocaust it drove are among the brutal consequences and stark reminders of not recognizing this distinction.
Hormone, from the Greek, hormon, meaning 'that which sets in motion'.
from the Greek, akrasia, meaning 'loss of free will'; acrasins are signalling molecules, providing the function that hormones have, for instance, in humans.
context is king
A FRAME refers here to a frame of reference, a reference frame, or category. They are LANGUAGES, meta-LANGUAGES, that by contextualizing and defining the SIGNS that they contain and refer to, give them their meaning.
CULTURES are environmental FRAMES, meta-LANGUAGES that aggregate a community's PERCEPTION and EXPRESSION. Reflecting the wisdom, fears, and strategies that have been learned and passed on, their histories of families, communities, and peoples, are histories of privilege and trauma as varied, intransigent, and challenging to unravel as those of any individual are.
The differences between CULTURES provide opportunities for learning and development, but contextualizing and defining the LANGUAGES that evolve with them, and informing the interpretation of those that have not, they also construct semantic FALSE-FRIENDS.
This definition of the term, frames of reference, taken from the Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, aligns with the broader application of it here for FRAMES.
category mistakes
In the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes referred to the category errors that philosophers make. Three hundred years later, Gilbert Ryle coined the term category mistake, in The Concept Of Mind, illustrating it with several examples, one concerning a misunderstanding about universities.
The philosophical error had also been identified, by professor Heinrich Hertz, in respect of physics.
The prefix "meta-" is used here as it is used in the term meta-language — a language used to describe or contextualize another language.
Language: a system of arbitrary signals, symbols or signs, used to communicate information.
to communicate: to convey information through a system of arbitrary signals.
Semantic: of or relating to meaning.
Meaning: the sense or reference of an EXPRESSION.
to recognize: to know something as the same as, or belonging to the same class as, something known before.
from the poem The Stare's Nest by My Window, published in Meditations In Time Of Civil War (1922-23), by William Butler Yeats — on the Irish Civil War.
corporatism
the organization of a state on a corporative basis. — Collins English Dictionary.
the principles, doctrine, or system of corporative organization of a political unit, as a city or state. [1885-90] corporatist. — Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary.
the control of a state or organization by large interest groups; "individualism is in danger of being swamped by a kind of corporatism" — TFD Thesaurus, Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection.
corporative
of a state organized into and governed by corporations of individuals involved in any given profession, industry, etc. — Collins English Dictionary.
of or relating to a government or political system in which the principal economic functions, such as banking, industry, labor, and government, are organized as corporate entities. — American Heritage Dictionary.
of or pertaining to a political system under which the principal economic functions, as banking, industry, and labor, are organized as corporate entities. — Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary.
The first Gilded Age, from the 1870s to 1890s, was named after Mark Twain's novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, which satirized the excesses and societal problems which had arisen from the laissez-faire capitalism, political corruption, and wealth inequality of the times. A second Gilded Age, named then for its resemblance to the first, is considered to have begun between the 1980s and 2010s and to have continued to the present day.
The nature of the differences between the first and second Gilded Ages, was also examined in 2015 by historian Steve Fraser.
biophysicality
If it is unavoidable that descriptions of the ineffable are in some manner metaphorical, and anthropocentric concepts of the soul are set aside, BEINGS can be defined as 'vehicles' of life and LIFE inferred recursively.
BEINGS are BIOPHYSICAL EXPRESSIONS; the interpretations their ENDOSEMIOTIC systems generate in response to changes in their internal and external environments constructing their ONTOLOGICAL sensibility of self and other that organizes and animates them..
Every BIOPHYSICAL construct requires a psychological correlate in order to survive, any psychological construct requires a BIOPHYSICAL correlate in order to exist. Psychology in actuality is then the METABIOPHYSICAL account signified by a BEING.
wellness
The development of wellness and illness in an individual, is a function of the interaction between their BIOPHYSICAL actuality and their environment. This system as a whole then is impacted by the receipt or privation of care and support and medical or psychological interventions.
Research into cancer and other diseases has identified the existence and primacy of METABIOPHYSICAL systems, and the need to address them as a whole, but despite the work of the WHO the BROADCASTING systems of modern societies seem increasingly to discount 'holistic' systems and promote reductionist mechanical models.
From Cosmic Religion: with Other Opinions and Aphorisms, 1931, Covici-Friede, quoted in The Expanded Quotable Einstein, Princeton University Press; 2nd edition (May 30, 2000); Page 208.
functioning, disability and health
The holistic biopsychosocial overview of wellness and illness the WHO presents, is taught today in medical schools; however, despite this, and the publication of the ICF, and now the ICD (International Classification of Diseases), its significance still seems relatively unrecognized and its impact on social organization and its institutions relatively minimal — on account, perhaps, of negative political lobbying.
The article, from which the quote was taken, although accessible in 2024, has now been taken down by Stanford Medicine. The new article (at Stanford research builds link between sleep, cancer progression) still refers to Spiegal's work, but the expurgated quote there now, intentionally or otherwise, seems to downplay the research, and to distance Stanford from Spiegal and the view he expressed.
being — defined recursively.
Life is the condition of being.
Being is the condition of BEINGS.
A BEING is a descendant of BEINGS.
I am a BEING.
Ruppert, Edward E.; Fox, Richard, S.; Barnes, Robert D. (2004). Invertebrate Zoology, 7th edition. Cengage Learning. pp. 148-174; cited in Jellyfish, Taxonomy (list item: Staurozoa), Wikipedia..
Fautin, Daphne G. and Sandra L. Romano. 1997. Cnidaria. Sea anemones, corals, jellyfish, sea pens, hydra. Version 24 April 1997. http://tolweb.org/Cnidaria/2461/1997.04.24 in The Tree of Life Web Project, http://tolweb.org/.
Emphasizing the whole and the interdependence of its parts.