On 9/15/06, Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca wrote:
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.
Fair enough.
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.)
I think mathematics and programming appear that way because they deal with things that are imaginary. In reality, five oranges, for instance, are not equal to another five oranges. However many electrons it takes to trigger some switch, they're not the same thing as another bunch of that many electrons. The thing that can be measured and equated is the event, which doesn't exist. This even could be, for instance, the triggering of some switch, which could be the building block of a program. Programs and equations don't exist, though, they occur. You could just as well say the uncertainty principle doesn't apply to birthdays, because today either is or isn't your birthday.
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.
Mmm, how thought processes work. Between Gestalt perception and the magical number seven, I have half of my understanding of music. The other half being harmonic and subharmonic series.
-Chuckk