Time and relationships (or, consciousness per Martin Heidegger)

[fuzzyfelt]

What I have in mind here is the heat death universe for example - a process that is eternal in its striving towards the goal, but approaches that limit asymptotically, or with ever diminishing returns. The expanding and cooling of the universe need never stop, so it is eternal, but there is less and less actual progress being made all the time.

If you are asking more specifically how does it arise?, then the Peircean view would be that vagueness fluctuates and fleeting events can spark the start of a symmetry breaking.

Thanks for the explanation.

Sorry, I’ve reread the post of yours that I quoted before and realize that I misunderstood. I was confused by the view expressed that Derrida argues that crispness arises from crispness, and was trying to guess at what that meant and how it differed to Peirce. Instead I’ll ask if you would explain the crispness which you say Derrida argues gives rise to more crispness?

And, I see now you had stressed the importance of the relationship in Peircean thought, too. I think in Derrida’s view the importance of relationships would remove prioritisation of any polarities.

And lastly, the seeming prioritisation of terms like “secondness” had me confused. I thought you were saying that the eternal process itself arose.

 

[apeiron]

Sorry, I’ve reread the post of yours that I quoted before and realize that I misunderstood. I was confused by the view expressed that Derrida argues that crispness arises from crispness, and was trying to guess at what that meant and how it differed to Peirce. Instead I’ll ask if you would explain the crispness which you say Derrida argues gives rise to more crispness?

In his critique of structualism, Derrida argues that beginnings must have "originary complexity". I am calling that crisp initial condition in the sense that something definite and already complexly structured exists. Whereas vague initial conditions would be a high symmetry fog of everything/nothing. A state of pure indeterminacy.

From Wiki...

In that context, in 1959, Derrida asked the question: Must not structure have a genesis, and must not the origin, the point of genesis, be already structured, in order to be the genesis of something?[44] In other words, every structural or "synchronic" phenomenon has a history, and the structure cannot be understood without understanding its genesis.[45] At the same time, in order that there be movement, or potential, the origin cannot be some pure unity or simplicity, but must already be articulated—complex—such that from it a "diachronic" process can emerge. This originary complexity must not be understood as an original positing, but more like a default of origin, which Derrida refers to as iterability, inscription, or textuality.[46] It is this thought of originary complexity that sets Derrida's work in motion, and from which all of its terms are derived, including "deconstruction"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida

And, I see now you had stressed the importance of the relationship in Peircean thought, too. I think in Derrida’s view the importance of relationships would remove prioritisation of any polarities.

Yes, but in order of priority it would still be first, the existence of a vague potential, then some differentiation or secondness that breaks the symmetry, then the thirdness of habits or law as this symmetry-breaking takes a widespread stabilising form. In vagueness, there is not yet either a polarity or a relating - just the potential for these things to start happening.

The Peircean scheme is quite difficult to get right because it is not a familiar way of thinking at all. And also, the scheme is a little lacking in how it deals with dichotomies (even though Peirce saw himself improving on Hegel).

So Peirce would stress the relationship of event with event (secondness or dyadic relations). I would stress the greater relationship between event and context (thirdness or the interaction of local free action and global habits or constrants). Though both things are going on in Peirce's causal scheme.

Note that the polarities or dichotomies always fit into a local~global format. They are asymmetric in scale and so result in the triadic organisation that is a hierarchy.

So for example any standard Greek metaphysical dichotomy like discrete~continuous or chance~necessity. Discrete is the the local pole (point-like, marked, definite, located) whereas the continuous is the global scale (the context for discreteness, the extended, the unbroken, that which gets marked). Likewise, chance is the local spontaneous event, the local free acts, and necessity is the global constraints, the ambient laws about what must be.

And lastly, the seeming prioritisation of terms like “secondness” had me confused. I thought you were saying that the eternal process itself arose.

Yes, secondness arises out of the pure possibility of firstness or vagueness in the Peircean triadic scheme. So firstness comes first. Then there is a first weak fluctuation that produces "an event" and so the possibility of relating with any other weak fluctuations that might be occurring. If this relating constructs anything more definite, then arises the possibility of thirdness or habits/regularities. And, to make things more recursively complicated, thirdness would have to be present at least weakly even for relating fluctuations to begin to find some stable expression.

So priority is given to vagueness. And in the beginning, there is both secondness and thirdness, though secondness is only tentative or weakly developed in the first moments, and thirdness is present even more weakly, more tentatively. But later, when the world has become crisply developed, the structuring force of thirdness or habit will be the dominant player. Local freedoms or play of events will be highly constrained.

 

[fuzzyfelt]

In his critique of structualism, Derrida argues that beginnings must have "originary complexity". I am calling that crisp initial condition in the sense that something definite and already complexly structured exists. Whereas vague initial conditions would be a high symmetry fog of everything/nothing. A state of pure indeterminacy.

From Wiki...

In that context, in 1959, Derrida asked the question: Must not structure have a genesis, and must not the origin, the point of genesis, be already structured, in order to be the genesis of something?[44] In other words, every structural or "synchronic" phenomenon has a history, and the structure cannot be understood without understanding its genesis.[45] At the same time, in order that there be movement, or potential, the origin cannot be some pure unity or simplicity, but must already be articulated—complex—such that from it a "diachronic" process can emerge. This originary complexity must not be understood as an original positing, but more like a default of origin, which Derrida refers to as iterability, inscription, or textuality.[46] It is this thought of originary complexity that sets Derrida's work in motion, and from which all of its terms are derived, including "deconstruction"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida

With caveats, as I understand Derrida, I agree that he writes of “originary complexity”, however as the quote says, “this must not be understood as an original positing”. I think, instead, it is a dynamic, open repetition, for example, interpretations changing over time and into the future, with no precise origin (" but more like a default of origin, which Derrida refers to as iterability, inscription, or textuality.[46]"). But in writing this I’m probably assigning it an amount of crispness which I think Derrida would avoid. So, I find it difficult to consider this a precise origin.

Although to quote out of context could make this sound a bit awkward-

“For example, the value of the transcendental arche [archie] must make its necessity felt before letting itself be erased. The concept of arche-trace must comply with both that necessity and that erasure. It is in fact contradictory and not acceptable within the logic of identity. The trace is not only the disappearance of origin — within the discourse that we sustain and according to the path that we follow it means that the origin did not even disappear, that it was never constituted except reciprocally by a non-origin, the trace, which thus becomes the origin of the origin. From then on, to wrench the concept of the trace from the classical scheme, which would derive it from a presence or from an originary non-trace and which would make of it an empirical mark, one must indeed speak of an originary trace or arche-trace."

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...&resnum=1&ved=0CBgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
(Peirce is discussed in these pages, too.)



I edited this link out, but not finding the one I want to replace it, have edited it back in again, as fairly relevant-

Yes, but in order of priority it would still be first, the existence of a vague potential, then some differentiation or secondness that breaks the symmetry, then the thirdness of habits or law as this symmetry-breaking takes a widespread stabilising form. In vagueness, there is not yet either a polarity or a relating - just the potential for these things to start happening.

The Peircean scheme is quite difficult to get right because it is not a familiar way of thinking at all. And also, the scheme is a little lacking in how it deals with dichotomies (even though Peirce saw himself improving on Hegel).

So Peirce would stress the relationship of event with event (secondness or dyadic relations). I would stress the greater relationship between event and context (thirdness or the interaction of local free action and global habits or constrants). Though both things are going on in Peirce's causal scheme.

Note that the polarities or dichotomies always fit into a local~global format. They are asymmetric in scale and so result in the triadic organisation that is a hierarchy.

So for example any standard Greek metaphysical dichotomy like discrete~continuous or chance~necessity. Discrete is the the local pole (point-like, marked, definite, located) whereas the continuous is the global scale (the context for discreteness, the extended, the unbroken, that which gets marked). Likewise, chance is the local spontaneous event, the local free acts, and necessity is the global constraints, the ambient laws about what must be.



Yes, secondness arises out of the pure possibility of firstness or vagueness in the Peircean triadic scheme. So firstness comes first. Then there is a first weak fluctuation that produces "an event" and so the possibility of relating with any other weak fluctuations that might be occurring. If this relating constructs anything more definite, then arises the possibility of thirdness or habits/regularities. And, to make things more recursively complicated, thirdness would have to be present at least weakly even for relating fluctuations to begin to find some stable expression.

So priority is given to vagueness. And in the beginning, there is both secondness and thirdness, though secondness is only tentative or weakly developed in the first moments, and thirdness is present even more weakly, more tentatively. But later, when the world has become crisply developed, the structuring force of thirdness or habit will be the dominant player. Local freedoms or play of events will be highly constrained.

So, here is where my confusion lies, that something without beginning might begin, and for the existence of a relationship between things before both those things come into existence, and see some address of this.