On Fri, 15 Sep 2006, Chuckk Hubbard wrote:
It highlights the fact that the thing observed is never the thing-in-itself, for one. That no matter how well you know any thing or system, it's still only your own mind that you are knowing.
No, because it's not your own mind that you are observing. You really get to know things and systems.
It's the concept of the thing-in-itself that has to be abandoned; and then, knowing something is redefined as having understood that thing through the relations that you can have with it and make it have with other things.
However, in the process of eliminating the concept of the thing-in-itself, THEN what you are doing is getting to know your own mind (and other minds). It's a process of understanding why you had that opposition between thing-in-itself and relations-between-things, how that opposition is not that useful and how your mental model can become simpler by eliminating it.
Something like the concept of the thing-in-itself can appear in mathematics and computer programming, but that's because those things focus on invention rather than discovery. (ok, discovery can happen there, but it always relies on things that have been purely invented before.)
If there is such a thing, and it can never be accurately measured, then whether it is "particle" or "wave" isn't knowable or relevant.
Right: and by abandoning the stereotypes of "particle" and "wave" you are getting to know yourself (or how thought processes work). Analogies have to be abandoned when they stop working but we are often attached to them more than what we should.
_ _ __ ___ _____ ________ _____________ _____________________ ... | Mathieu Bouchard - tél:+1.514.383.3801 - http://artengine.ca/matju | Freelance Digital Arts Engineer, Montréal QC Canada