words and maps

In his paper, 'A Non-Aristotlean System and its Necessity for Rigour in Mathematics and Physics', Alfred Korzybski made two observations: 'A map is not the territory', and 'Words are not the things they represent'. In the abbreviated quotation below, these are highlighted in bold; italics representing emphases by its author.

... A) A map may have a structure similar or dissimilar to the structure of the territory. B) Two similar structures have similar 'logical' characteristics. Thus, if in a correct map, Dresden is given as between Paris and Warsaw, a similar relationship is found in the actual territory C) A map is not the territory. D) An ideal map would contain the map of the map, the map of the map of the map., endlessly. ... We may call it self-reflexiveness. Languages share with the map the above four characteristics. A) Languages have structure, thus we may have languages of elementalist structure such as 'space' and 'time', 'observer' and 'observed', 'body' and 'soul', 'senses' and 'mind', 'intellect' and 'emotions', 'thinking' and 'feeling', 'thought' and 'intuition'., which allow verbal division or separation. Or we may have languages of a non-elementalist structure such as 'space-time', the new quantum languages, 'time binding', 'different order abstractions', 'semantic reactions'., which do not involve verbal division or separation.; also mathematical languages of 'order', 'relation', 'structure', 'function', 'variable', 'invariant', 'difference', 'addition', 'division'., which apply to 'senses' and 'mind', that is, can be 'seen' and 'thought of',. B) If we use languages of a structure non-similar to the world and our nervous system, our verbal predictions are not verified empirically, we cannot be 'rational' or adjusted,. ... ,. C) Words are not the things they represent. D) Language also has self-reflexive characteristics. We use language to speak about language, which fact introduces serious verbal and semantic difficulties solved by the theory of multiordinality. ...     Alfred Korzybski, 1931.

Research into the psychological impacts of online social media and gaming, (SOME), spurred by the COVID pandemic and its requirements to self-isolate, has primarily been driven by concerns regarding its impact on minors. While its primary focus has then been on learning and development in respect of parenting and teaching, its observations are more widely relevant.

Learning and development are universal, and parenting and teaching are rooted in their overarching social context. The impacts SOME reportedly has on socioemotional development then have a consequential impact on psychosocial behaviours. These are central, not only to the integrative development of an individual's schema and identity, but also to the development of societies from families to communities, nations and beyond.

Most importantly, the change that SOME technologies are driving is transformative in nature. The political and economic context that provides the foundation and ongoing support for this revolution should therefore be scrutinized at every level of society. Instead of promoting a sense of individual helplessness, and accepting current developments as an inevitability, it should be remembered that, ultimately, context not content is king.

SO, as in SOccer, and ME, as in MEntal — borrowed from Finnish.

See, for instance, Electronic Screen Use and Children's Socioemotional Problems: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies. American Psychological Association, Psychological Bulletin 2025, Vol. 151, No. 5, 513-543.

If, as seems likely, gene-culture coevolution drives the development of LIFE; and if BIOSEMIOSIS is fundamental to every society of BEINGS; then the change that SOME is driving may now be mediating an evolutionary transition in individuality.

context and content

Writing provided a container for MEANING, fencing it off from sensibility and actuality, and in that, from ourselves. History began as if before it had never been, and a narrative of progress, from darkness towards the light, became the mythology of modernity.

At first holding back oblivion, like handprints on cave walls, writing kept records. But writing requires a beginning and an end, with meaning sandwiched in between, whereas actuality has neither. Writing then quickly began to drain, revise, and rewrite actuality, and with that the truth.

Where once, words only strove to represent things, they became them. And although this was convenient, it was also reflexive, steadily rendering us neotenous — it's too easy, too quick, to prove we're right and they're wrong; or to show them as even more so to imagine otherwise. Writing seems to have ended our struggle to find the truth we are a part of, but in our flight from death it seems to have turned our backs on life.

Symbols can be non-figurative (e.g. letters and numbers) but they can also be figurative. Figurative symbols are often referred to as icons. For the young, especially, these may include nursery stories or pantomimes, toy trucks and dolls.

Characterized by continuous or natural development;     Oxford English Dictionary [OED:] 6. e

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, to the communicative goals of the MEANING that informed it..

MEANING here, refers to that which a BEING PERCEIVES of the EXPRESSIONS of NOUMENA. Developed and encoded through the FRAME of ONTOLOGENY, MEANING is then inheritable.

Inherited and learnt by experience, PERCEPTION is the RECOGNITION by a BEING of MEANING in what their senses can register, that then is incorporated into MEANING.

signs

Aristotle and Plato wrote about signs, and about symbols; signs in the world of nature, and symbols in human culture. Now, symbols are considered to be a type of sign; whether they are iconic or signified through arbitrary conventions rather than through any direct relationship with what is signified — such as numbers, letters, words, etc.

Words in their primary or immediate Signification stand for nothing, but the Ideas in the Mind of him that uses them.

Derived from the Greek, semio-, meaning a sign, and its suffix -sis, meaning the equivalent, in English, of -ing, the word, semiosis, is then literally defined as sign-ing, sign-action, or signification; the process of attributing and responding to MEANING.

Anything when RECOGNIZED, becomes a SIGN of whatever is RECOGNIZED. BIOSEMIOSIS is the process which generates that RECOGNITION; ENDOSEMIOSIS, that which takes place within a BEING and EXOSEMIOSIS, a BEING's external EXPRESSION, representing signification in a natural world that also contains human BEINGS.

An icon is an image, or a figurative representation, of an animate, inanimate, or abstract object.

Taken from: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, I.ii.2: 405, John Locke, 1689.

BIOSEMIOSIS is a recursive process, enabling BEINGS to generate MEANING by aligning their PERCEPTION of current SENSATION with what they can RECOGNIZE from MEANING previously EMBODIED in them, either through inheritance or by themselves. ENDOSEMIOSIS refers then to their RECOGNITION of those NOUMENA that they EMBODY, and EXOSEMIOSIS to their communication with their external environment through EXPRESSION and SENSATION.

BIOSEMIOSIS is a recursive process, enabling BEINGS to generate MEANING by aligning their PERCEPTION of current SENSATION with what they can RECOGNIZE from MEANING previously EMBODIED in them, either through inheritance or by themselves. ENDOSEMIOSIS refers then to their RECOGNITION of those NOUMENA that they EMBODY, and EXOSEMIOSIS to their communication with their external environment through EXPRESSION and SENSATION.

Noumenon, is a Greek word meaning "that which is perceived", and the word that Kant then used to identify the thing-in-itself — the underlying reality that may then be RECOGNIZED as a SIGN.

NOUMENA include energies as well as objects. They may function as SIGNS of themselves, as rocks, or heat, or holes, or hands; or as qualities they may be associated with, food, green, danger, etc. NOUMENA may also SIGN things distinct from themselves — a woman may SIGNIFY a mother; a sound may SIGNIFY a river, a phoneme, or "Mum!" A mark may SIGNIFY a word, a smudge, or a symbol, like pi; or a photograph or a drawing a a pipe, or a pie.

Kant referred to recognition of the thing-in-itself as perception, but here, PERCEPTION, is used to label one of the four processes of BIOSEMIOSIS.

Painting by Rene Magritte, Ceci n'est pas une pipe., 1929.

The entire sequence of events involved in the development of an individual BEING over its lifespan.

...ontological (is) the best adverbial or adjectival derivative of being.. ...ontological security the basic existential position from which [a BEING] encounters all the hazards of life from a centrally firm place of their own and other's reality and identity.

...ontological (is) the best adverbial or adjectival derivative of being.. ..Ontological security.. is the basic existential position from which a person encounters all the hazards of life, social, ethical, spiritual, biological, from a centrally firm place of his own and other people's reality and identity.

If experience is denied, our awareness of what we are is restricted, we are estranged from our actualities. We are in a state of ontological insecurity, unable to take our being in the world for granted.

science

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.    Albert Einstein.

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 functions hormones have, for instance in humans.

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.

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, such as banking, industry, and labor, are organized as corporate entities. — Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary.

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.

biopsychosocial

After nine years of international revision efforts coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Health Assembly on May 22, 2001, approved the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health and its abbreviation of "ICF." This classification was first created in 1980 ...to provide a unifying framework for classifying the consequences of disease... ...Functioning and disability are viewed as a complex interaction between the health condition of the individual and the contextual factors of the environment as well as personal factors. The picture produced by this combination of factors and dimensions is of "the person in his or her world." The classification treats these dimensions as interactive and dynamic rather than linear or static. It allows for an assessment of the degree of disability, although it is not a measurement instrument. It is applicable to all people, whatever their health condition. The language of the ICF is neutral as to etiology, placing the emphasis on function rather than condition or disease. It also is carefully designed to be relevant across cultures as well as age groups and genders, making it highly appropriate for heterogeneous populations.

The biopsychosocial overview of wellness and illness, which the WHO describes, is taught today in medical schools; however, despite the publication of the ICF, and 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 shadow political lobbying.

The focus of the adjective, biopsychosocial, is intentionally on human beings. To allow a universal focus, on BEINGS generally, and explicitly avoid anthropocentrism, here the neologism, ONTOLOGENY, is used.

Anthropocentrism, is the belief that our species is "the central fact and final aim of a universe that must therefore be understood in terms of human experience, needs, and values."

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.

close

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.

 The German word Täuschung in the original note, meaning 'delusion' (JPG opens in a new tab).

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".

Technically, delusion is a belief that, though false, has been surrendered to and accepted by the whole mind as a truth; illusion is an impression that, though false, is entertained on the recommendation of the senses or the imagination. Illusion (n.), developed in Church Latin from the late 14c. onwards to mean: a "deceptive appearance".

On delusion, and illusion; from the Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved: 4 October 2022.

I'd like people to reconceptualize cancer as a biological event that triggers stress responses affecting how the disease progresses... Managing those stress responses by adopting healthy eating and exercise habits, getting a good night's sleep, and finding good emotional and social support, should be regarded as much a part of cancer treatment as chemotherapy or radiation.

The article from which the quote was taken, although accessible in 2024 — at https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2003/10/stanford-research-builds-link-between-sleep-cancer-progression.html — has now been taken down. The new article, (at Stanford research builds link between sleep, cancer progression), while still referring to Spiegal's work carries an expurgated quote that seems, intentionally or otherwise, to downplay the research and to distance Stanford from Spiegal and the opinion he expressed.

bio-psycho-physical

The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?     Albert Einstein.

If it is unavoidable that descriptions of the ineffable, in some manner, are metaphorical; and if anthropocentric conceptions of the soul are set aside; then BEINGS can be defined as 'vehicles' of life, and LIFE inferred recursively.

Every BIOPHYSICAL construct requires a psychological correlate in order to survive, and any psychological construct requires a BIOPHYSICAL correlate in order to exist. In actuality, psychology is then the METABIOPHYSICAL account that is SIGNIFIED by a BEING.

BEINGS are the BIOPHYSICAL EXPRESSION of their ENDOSEMIOTIC systems, interpreting and driving change in their selves and their environments, and generating their ONTOLOGENIC sensibility of self and other that informs and motivates them..

ontology, [onto- an individual, a BEING, -logy an account, to tell or speak], refers here not to ego or mind but to the superordinate emergent quality of self and other that is the foundation of LIFE, learning and survival; the METABIOLOGY that then FRAMES a BEING.

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.

..a structure of concepts, values, customs, or views by means of which an individual or group perceives or evaluates data, communicates ideas, and regulates behavior.

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.

A foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is shown a number of colleges, libraries, playing fields, museums, scientific departments and administrative offices. He then asks "But where is the University? I have seen where the members of the Colleges live, where the Registrar works, where the scientists experiment and the rest. But I have not yet seen the University in which reside and work the members of your University." It has then to be explained to him that the University is not another collateral institution, some ulterior counterpart to the colleges, laboratories and offices which he has seen. The University is just the way in which all that he has already seen is organized. When they are seen and when their co-ordination is understood, the University has been seen. His mistake lay in his innocent assumption that it was correct to speak of Christ Church, the Bodleian Library, the Ashmolean Museum and the University, to speak, that is, as if "the University" stood for an extra member of the class of which these other units are members. He was mistakenly allocating the University to the same category as that to which the other institutions belong.

The philosophical error had also been identified, by professor Heinrich Hertz, in respect of physics.

Our confused wish finds expression in the confused question as to the nature of force and electricity. But the answer which we want is not really an answer to this question. It is not by finding out more and fresh relations and connections that it can be answered; but by removing the contradictions existing between those already known, and thus perhaps by reducing their number. When these painful contradictions are removed, the question as to the nature of force will not have been answered; but our minds, no longer vexed, will cease to ask illegitimate questions.

The term BEING, applies here to all forms of LIFE, whether multicellular (humans, ants, plants, etc.); unicellular (bacteria, archaea, algae, etc.); or MODULAR.

MEANING does not refer here to the output or conclusion of a cognitive function or human mind, but to motivation, founded by learning and LIFE.

As little as a ball on a billiard table can move before receiving an impact, so little can a man get up from his chair before being drawn or driven by a motive. But then his getting up is as necessary and inevitable as the rolling of a ball after the impact. And to expect that anyone will do something to which absolutely no interest impels them is the same as to expect that a piece of wood shall move toward me without being pulled by a string.

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.

A metatransition is a metasystem transition to either a more complex or a simpler structure, ultimately leading to a transitory or permanent evolutionary transition in individuality.

Here, metasystem refers to a general, rather than to a restricted, controlling or organizational system that maintains the HOMEOSTASIS necessary for the functioning of a system and subsystems.

Meta-language — a language used to describe or contextualize another language.

The prefix "meta-" is used here in the same manner as it is used in the term meta-language — a language that describes or contextualizes a 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.

Hydrozoa show great diversity of lifestyle; some species maintain the polyp form for their entire life and do not form medusae at all.

Polyps of some species propagate vegetatively, forming colonies.. polymorphism occurs in colonies of some species of hydrozoans and anthozoans, the polyps being specialized for functions such as feeding, defense, and sexual reproduction.

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.