[Themaintainers] Process philosophy (and beyond) [was: Maintenance and the Metaphysics of Artifacts]

Fri May 13 17:11:59 EDT 2022

Hi David,

It's incredible that there's a journal for sustainable smart behavior.
I am yet to read your paper earnestly but your focus on rhythms is very
interesting and some of this might be helpful. If not, I hope it
"resonates" :)

*Gnostic rhythms*
A few years ago while wading through readings on gnostic thought, I came
across a phrase that "resonated" with me:
*"Thinking is Brain churn. Knowing is Field connection"*

To connect with something conveys a rhythmic imperative that is absent in
an act of superficial thinking.
I suppose it's what characterizes what lies beyond the uncanny valley of
GOFAI and the strange loops that make us (A reference to Douglas
Hofstadter's I am a Strange Loop)
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop>

Amongst the many "beliefs" ascribed to the Gnostic canon, of which there
are many, a few stand out including the emphasis on the illusionary powers
of a lower realm (demiurge) and the truth of the upper realm (pleroma)
This is somewhat related to Maya
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_(religion)> of the vedic and buddhist
traditions, I think.
To gnostic believers, the imperative to maintain the demiurge is the
self-evidentiary nature of this illusion and therefore anathema.

When I connected with this, it had a huge influence on how I think about
maintenance. 😬
I find the concepts from the Gnostic gospels as discovered through the Nag
Hammadi library and the circumstances to their discovery fascinating.
They offer a fascinating counter-narrative to a dominant ordering and
interpretation of reality in the West.

Back to this dichotomy between illusion and truth.
So:
Thinking = Brain Churn and confers affiliation with the demiurge
Knowing = Field Connection and confers affiliation with pleroma.

*Biological Market Theory and the irrational noise of Human cognition
relative to Animal cognition*
Characterizing "Thinking" as we in the West are familiar with it as
net counterproductive was an interesting provocation
Here's where I encountered the fascinating research of *Ronald Noë'ss
*Biological
market theory that demonstrates the inherent rationality of economic
transactions in non-human interspecies interactions that are so often not
characterized in markets composed of humans. This excerpt from the
Invisible Paw discusses the noise introduced from "Thinking"
<https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-invisible-paw/>

> *NOË: Homo economicus I don’t think exists really in humans because they
> are not that rational. But natural selection can of course end up with,
> after many many generations and a lot of selection, you can end up with an
> organism that is doing things that look very rational. It’s not using
> reason, of course, it’s using innate mechanisms but it is programmed to do
> things that look very rational. Let’s put it that way.*

>
> *DUBNER: That’s so interesting. So as I’m sure you well know, Richard
> Thaler won the Nobel in economics for essentially arguing that Homo
> economicus is greatly overrated. You’re saying that Homo economicus is
> really— that the idea of that is probably more fully present in other
> animals, other than humans then, yeah?*

>
> *NOË: Yeah you should leave out the “Homo” part and you’re okay. I think
> the less you use cognitive mechanisms, the least brain you have, if you
> have no neurons you have a better chance of being very rational in your
> behavior and then when you use them. When you use your brain, you can make
> all kinds of mistakes.*

>
> *DUBNER: What you just said is a summary of what’s attracted me to
> economics and behavioral economics these last 20 years. Because the
> anomalies, or the holes in the rational theory has been pointed out. But
> when you say it like that, it kind of blows me away because you’re
> basically saying that the more we think, the more capacity we have for
> cognitive activity or decision-making, the more likely we are to be less
> rational. Yeah?*

> *NOË: There is of course a big advantage of using a brain for all kinds of
> solutions. You’re very plastic, you can react to all kinds of novel
> situations. And things without brains, like bacteria, fungi, or whatever,
> cannot react instantly to all kinds of different situations. They are well
> selected to act in a certain environment. If they are in that environment
> however, then they are very good at it. They are selected to do exactly the
> right thing — in thousands to millions of generations — to do the right
> thing in the right moment. In that respect, if you look at that and you
> would say, “Well, how would a human react in the same kind of situation in
> the most rational way?” He would do exactly the same as that fungus or
> bacteria.*

*Adam Curtis on The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts*
Lastly, The imperative to ascribe order from the natural world onto
mechanical systems is the subject of Episode 2 of All Watched Over by
Machines of Loving Grace is titled "The Use and Abuse of Vegetational
Concepts"
The episode *"investigates how machine ideas such as cybernetics and
systems theory were applied to natural ecosystems, and how this relates to
the false idea that there is a balance of nature. *
*Cybernetics has been applied to human beings to attempt to build societies
without central control, self organising networks built of people, based on
a fantasy view of nature."*
I find the Adam Curtis treatments bit of a chore to watch but I find myself
drawn to them to trace the origins of certain moods or rhythms that
characterize the post-world-war neo-liberal consensus of the 20th century.
All his work is incredible and available for free here
<https://thoughtmaybe.com/by/adam-curtis/>

On Fri, May 13, 2022 at 8:19 AM David Ing isss at daviding.com <
isss at daviding.com> wrote:

> On the first Maintenance and Philosophy of Technology online seminar
> session today, Mark Young raised the question of a substance ontology
> (associated with Aristotle) and how a process philosophy (oriented first
> around time) might give a different perspective.
>
> Process philosophy (e.g. Alfred North Whitehead) is tough to read.
> Someone also if there was a normative application of the philosophy.
>
> Around Toronto, I've been working with the Systems Changes Learning Circle
> <http://systemschanges.com/online/>.  We've made the shift from systems
> thinking (in the 20th century sense) towards a new interest in "systems
> change".  This has led us into appreciating living systems, that many would
> view from a process philosophy.
>
> To make the ideas more understandable to the layman, we talk about
> "rhythmic shifts", that might be differentiated from normal rhythms in a
> living system.  We also make the distinction between kairos (felt time) as
> opposed to chronos (clock time).
>
> I've just finished a revision of a paper for publication yesterday, if
> anyone wants to take a peek.  It's downloadable from
> http://coevolving.com/pubs/2022_SSB_Ing_SystemsChangesLearning_v0511a.pdf
> .
>
> Returning to Mark's example of maintaining the Golden Gate Bridge in San
> Francisco, we might take a different approach.  Instead of starting from
> maintaining non-living systems and trying to add features of living, it may
> be easier to start from maintaining with living systems, and remove the
> features to become non-living.  This would be the way that mathematical
> biologist Robert Rosen
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Rosen_(biologist)> would approach
> the categories.
>
> David Ing
> Systems Changes Learning Circle, Toronto
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-- 
Thanks,
Varun
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