Stephen Paul King (stephenk1@home.com)
Sat, 11 Dec 1999 12:27:53 -0500
Dear Prof. Matsuno,
Koichiro Matsuno wrote:
>
> Dear Stephen and All,
>
> Stephen Paul King <stephenk1@home.com> wrote:
>
[KM]
> >> The capacity of doing measurement on the part of any material body,
> >> that
> >> is, internal measurement precedes an implementation of interaction,
> >> rather than the other way around.
>
[SPK]
> > Could it be possible that "internal measurement" and "interaction" are
> >duals, e.g. the action of an internal measurement is the mathematical
> >dual (like the Poyntriagin ? duality) of the act of an interaction? This
> >would make the question of priorness mute! This is also why I am
> >advancing the idea that interactions between physical systems are dual
> >to bisimulations between computation/information systems!
[KM]
> This seems to be the matter of descriptive stance we take. If we address
> the record registered in the present perfect tense in the present tense,
> this will be made in the present tense to ourselves external to the record.
Yes, it seems that when we engage in any act of communication, we do so
by using a representation that is tensed according to the situation at
hand. The way that we "externalize" our selves to the record is, I
believe, a reflection of the cut that is introduced to distinguish
subject from object. This is a very difficult issue that needs to be
considered carefully. :-)
> As far as the externalist present tense is concerned, I can see the working
> of a duality between a measurement and an interaction. The externalist
> present tense is an ontological commitment to a being (e.g., a time
> capsule). On the other hand, if we address the moving inconsistencies
> driving the present progressive in the present tense, this will be made in
> the present tense to ourselves internal to the migrating inconsistencies.
Umm, do you see any relation between this notion and the perception of
the "flow" of consciousness?
> The internalist present tense is an ontological commitment to migrating
> inconsistencies, or you might say, durations, which Heidegger may have
> called beings-in-the-world that remain mortal.
Yes, these differences between externalist and externalist stances are
necessarily so. It is like shifting between first and second person
modes of narrative.
> Just for the sake of a clarification, imagine the relationship between
> our Milky Way and the Andromeda nebula, roughly 2 million light years apart.
> If the time scale we take is far greater than 2M light years, their mutual
> measurement and interaction may be called duals. On the other hand, if the
> time scale is far less than 2M, the unique association between internal
> measurement by each and inter-action between the two could hardly be
> conceived. To say the least, internal measurement by each can be conceivable
> even if we are not sure about what the associated inter-action may look
> like.
The inconceivability of unique associations is, I my opinion, a means
to distinguish actual events from probable events for each individual
observer. This acts as a "greatest fixed point" type of boundary upon
the possible observations. This is discussed by Peter Wegner in his
paper: http://www.cs.brown.edu/~pw/papers/math1.ps
We can use the idea of "everything is allowed unless forbidden" and
then it is the migrating inconsistencies that create a flexible membrane
that bounds the permissible observational behaviors.
> Again, the issue must be on the artifacts intrinsic to our linguistic
> practice. Once we give a name to anything we want (e.g., Milky Way,
> Andromeda), we think that it is possible to talk about these things thus
> named from the viewpoint of nowhere. This is the externalist stance, and the
> resulting statement is made in the externalist present tense. This practice
> is truly irresistible and inevitable. What is focused is an ontological
> commitment, instead of an epistemological perception. The internalist stance
> upon the internalist present tense is another ontological commitment. These
> two commitments are incommensurable. Nonetheless, trespassing from one to
> the other also seems quite irresistible, though the orthodox physicist tries
> hard to resist such a temptation. What I would like to hope to myself is to
> know my trespassing when I did that. It's extremely tough, indeed.
We might, by switch back an forth between the two, generate a synthesis
that transcends the incommensurability. :-)
> Cheers,
> Koichiro
Kindest regards,
Stephen
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