The Four Qualities

April 3, 2015 Martin K. Jones 1 Comment

By convention sweet and by convention bitter,
By convention hot, by convention cold,
By convention color; but in reality atoms and void.

— Democritus

The ancient and archaic system of medicine called Humorism still has associations with modern psychological investigations via analogies with the Four Temperaments. Mentioned more for completeness, the four qualities of Humorism (Hotness, Coldness, Dryness, Wetness) may be considered linked to other fourfolds presented here such as the Four Seasons, the Four Elements, and as I mentioned the Four Temperaments.

These are called the four qualities because four relations between the Four Elements generate them, out of the six possible. Dryness is the relationship between Fire and Earth, Hotness is between Air and Fire, Wetness is between Water and Air, and Coldness is between Earth and Water. Alternatively, one can say Air has the qualities of being Hot and Wet, Fire is Hot and Dry, Water is Cold and Wet, and Earth is Cold and Dry.

As such these relations can be considered lying between the poles of the Four Elements. Along with the elements they may form a double square star, or two squares within a regular octagon. I’m not sure if this figure has a special name: in the anime “Inuyasha: the Final Act”, “Kagome” was this double square figure as well as the name of a major character. However “Kagome” actually seems to mean a different symbol: a star formed by two triangles within a regular hexagon. We don’t talk much about triads here.

There is also a children’s game called “Kagome Kagome”, where one child is centered within a ring of others, circling and chanting a song. The central child is only released if she can guess who is behind her when the chant stops. No peeking! Perhaps this position is reserved for reality or metaphysics in our representations.

These two axes can also be thought to encircle typical earth-type organisms within their habitable zones of humidity and temperature: neither too cold nor too hot, neither too dry nor too wet. This is known as a “Goldilocks effect”, after “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”. Also, the desirable middle between extremes is often called the “Golden Mean”, or the “Happy Medium”.

If humidity is considered to be a Cosine wave, and temperature is considered a Sine wave, then the Four Seasons can be located where x = 0 (Spring), π/2 (Summer), π (Fall), and 3π/2 (Winter). Q.E.D.!

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humorism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldilocks_principle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_mean_%28philosophy%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagome_crest

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kagome_Kagome

[*8.36, *8.107, *9.6]

fourfolds

Little, Big

April 1, 2015 Martin K. Jones Leave a comment

Ask not the elves for advice, because they will tell you both ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

— J. R. R. Tolkien

Another riddle, perhaps?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little,_Big

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sic_et_Non

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Abelard

[*8.43, *8.130]

fourfolds, Psychology

The Fundamental Four of Sandeep Gautam

March 22, 2015 Martin K. Jones 1 Comment

I was excited to recently find the long running blogs of Sandeep Gautam. The one I’ve looked at so far (“The Mouse Trap”) is mainly about psychology and neurology, but he seems to have a penchant for fourfolds, and some of the entries in “The Mouse Trap” talk about the same topics as my blog. He has also developed many interesting models of psychological and mental organization.

Guatam is a software developer and psychology enthusiast, from his short bio on his Psychology Today blog “The Fundamental Four”. He also has a multitude of other blogs (where does he find the time?), gives TED talks, and is just about everywhere on social media. Entries on “The Mouse Trap” are appearing less frequently these days, but it has been going since 2006.

Above is a diagram of the four fundamental evolutionary problems of humans as per psychologist Theodore Millon (and each also associated with a duality): survival or existence (pain/pleasure), adaptation (passive/active), replication (self/other), and abstraction (broad/narrow). Gautam’s Fundamental Four are the four basic drives to overcome these problems, a “lens” through which he sees psychology: food/foe (survival), flourishing/fun (adaptation), family/friends (replication), and focus/frame (abstraction). (I hope he doesn’t mind if I added “frame” to “focus”.)

I was not familiar with either Millon’s or Gautam’s work until now. I was thinking about updating my article on Aristotle’s Four Causes, and I chanced upon Gautam’s post on the subject because of images from it. I was soon very intrigued, because I see similarities in many of his formulations and mine! Also please compare these fourfolds to the Relational Models Theory.

Some of the more interesting blog entries of “The Mouse Trap”:

http://the-mouse-trap.com/2011/11/19/the-four-mechanisms-of-evolution/
(See my Theory of Evolution)

The Four Fundamental Causes

2 factor theories of personality

http://the-mouse-trap.com/2011/01/07/i-could-have-avoided-writing-this-blogpost-but-i-was-fated-to-be-a-blogger/
(See my Reasons Things Happen)

Six world hypotheses or how we explain eyerything and anything

The ABCD of Psychology and Happiness

Emotions and personailty : take 3

Links:

http://the-mouse-trap.com

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-fundamental-four

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-fundamental-four/201112/your-fundamental-four-journey

[*8.146, *8.147]

fourfolds

Snakes and Ladders

March 19, 2015 Martin K. Jones 1 Comment

My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must surmount these propositions; then he sees the world rightly.

— Ludwig Wittgenstein, from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 6.54

Consider the children’s game of “Snakes and Ladders”.

The object of the game is to traverse a sequence of locations on a game board, numbered from one (the beginning) to some maximum goal (the end), with the numbers increasing from the bottom of the board to the top. The player usually competes with other players to win the goal first, because otherwise why do it. Ladders join lower numbers at their base with higher numbers at their top. Snakes join higher numbers at their head with lower numbers at their tail.

The players take turns and each move forward a number of locations determined with a roll of a die. If a player lands on the bottom of a ladder, she can immediately climb to the top of it, skipping the locations in between. However if she lands on the head of a snake, she must slide down the snake to its tail, essentially losing her recent gains of several turns.

The game progresses by chance, and indeed the winner is completely chosen by luck. There are no choices that players can make to increase their chance of winning the game, and so it is completely random. It is evidently an ancient game and older versions often portrayed the ladders as virtues and the snakes as vices. What can this game teach us about morality and life in general?

Unfortunately the player cannot gain knowledge or experience along their journey to help them. There is no way to increase one’s chance to land on a ladder’s bottom or decrease one’s chance to land on a snake’s head. The game is on the other end of the spectrum from a choice driven game such as tic-tac-toe, or even chess. I’m also reminded of the card game “War”, which is another random game played by children. Such completely random games equalize chances of winning among different ages, I imagine.

From Wikipedia: The game (Snakes and Ladders) is a central metaphor of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. The narrator describes the game as follows:

All games have morals; and the game of Snakes and Ladders captures, as no other activity can hope to do, the eternal truth that for every ladder you hope to climb, a snake is waiting just around the corner, and for every snake a ladder will compensate. But it’s more than that; no mere carrot-and-stick affair; because implicit in the game is unchanging twoness of things, the duality of up against down, good against evil; the solid rationality of ladders balances the occult sinuosities of the serpent; in the opposition of staircase and cobra we can see, metaphorically, all conceivable oppositions, Alpha against Omega, father against mother.

Notes:

Actually, it reveals the fourness of things. The snake tails and ladder tops are different in kind from the snake heads and ladder bases, because landing on the former the player doesn’t change position. She can instead contemplate possibly backsliding and revisiting this location via snake or the experiences of having taken the long way instead of just climbing to this location via ladder.

A more modern version could replace the snakes and ladders with one entity, perhaps wormholes, which would deliver one instantly to the opposite end, either forward or backward. The name could be revised to “Shortcuts and Backtracks”, perhaps. Or maybe it would be too confusing.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snakes_and_Ladders

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_%28card_game%29

[*8.144, *9.102]

fourfolds, linear logic, logic

J.-Y. Girard’s Transcendental Syntax, V2

March 11, 2015 Martin K. Jones 1 Comment

Meaning is use.

– Ludwig Wittgenstein

If people never did silly things nothing intelligent would ever get done.

– Ludwig Wittgenstein

The latest two preprints by logician J.-Y. Girard continue his program for transcendental syntax, divided into deterministic and nondeterministic. He defines transcendental syntax as the study of the conditions of the possibility of language: to begin by discovering the preliminary suppositions in the creating of a logical sentence such as a proposition or deduction.

What are the presuppositions for using propositions? Girard claims the main one is the balance between the creation and the use of words, which is at the heart of meaning. But the notion that a proposition has a meaning that is well defined is prejudice, albeit one that allows us identify the terms of a sentence and thus to perform deductions.

Girard wants instead to find inner explanations of logical rules: explanations based on syntax instead of a semantics that correlates to a mandated “reality”. To emphasize this, he gives the term Derealism as another expression for transcendental syntax. Logical rules should have a normative aspect because of their utility, so his project appears to be one of pragmatism. Others have said that Linear Logic is the logic of the radical anti-realist.

Girard divides all of logical activity into four blocks that weave together: the Constat, the Performance (please forgive my shortening on the diagram above), L’usine (factory), and L’usage (use). These four blocks are partitioned by Kant’s analytic-synthetic and a priori-a posteriori distinctions. The analytic is said to have “no meaning”, that is, “locative”. The synthetic is said to have “meaning”, that is, “spiritual”. The a priori is said to be “implicit”, and the a posteriori is said to be “explicit”.
Can we find all the explanations we need to create logic internally? If so, perhaps it is only because of how the brain works, like how John Bolender posits that social relations described by the Relational Models Theory are created out of symmetry breaking structures of our nervous systems, which are in turn generated by our DNA. A realist would certainly say that our understanding of logical rules is enabled but also limited by our brains, whereas an idealist would say that our minds could “transcend” those limits. But it seems pragmatic to say that the mind is what the brain does.

I believe a closer analogy for the fourfold of Transcendental Syntax is to Hjelmslev’s Net than to Kant’s Analytic-Synthetic Distinction. If so, then Performance and L’usage are Content (Implicit), whereas Constat and L’usine are Expression (Explicit). Performance and Constat are Substance (Locative), and L’usine and L’usage are Form (Spiritual). Hjelmslev was a linguist that developed a theory of language as consisting of only internal rules.

Or even to analogy with Aristotle’s Four Causes, which is how I’ve arranged the first diagram: the Constat is the Material cause, the Performance is the Efficient cause, L’usine is the Formal cause, and L’usage is the Final cause. Material and Efficient causes are often considered mere matter in motion, which could be Locative, or meaningless (physical). Formal and Final could be Spiritual, or meaningful, as patterns of matter and motion, respectively.

Notes:

How can we know that a given named term is the same as another one in a different part of our formula? Rather than using names, or linking them through semantics or a well-defined meaning, we can tie terms together by their locations in our sentences and deductions.

References:

J.-Y. Girard / Transcendental syntax 1: deterministic case (January 2015 Preprint)

J.-Y. Girard / Transcendental syntax 2: non deterministic case (February 2015 Preprint)

https://girard.perso.math.cnrs.fr/Accueil.html

V. Michele Abrusci, Paolo Pistone / On Transcendental Syntax: a Kantian Program for Logic?

https://www.academia.edu/10495057/On_Trascendental_syntax_a_Kantian_program_for_logic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrony_and_diachrony

[*8.122, *8.123]

fourfolds, hermeneutics, logic

The Rational Structure of Inquiring Systems

February 26, 2015 Martin K. Jones Leave a comment

What are the components of consciousness? In the dissertation of L. Kurt Engelhart we see a fourfold used to analyze the texts and bodies of work of both scientists and philosophers, a hermeneutical tool if you will. This tool is also styled by concepts of “systems theory”, and requires the exposition of the aspects of Content, Control, Process, and Purpose of the authors. These match closely the Four Causes of Aristotle, which are the causes of made things or the explanations of how and why they came about: material, efficient, formal, and final. In fact, this close association was one of the main reasons I dove into the world of fourfolds. Texts are made things, after all.

Making is so fundamental to what we do, that humans have been called “Homo Faber”, man the maker. We make tools, stories, culture, and even our concept of self. What if I turned this tool onto my own work, the writings and images found here? Perhaps that will be the project of another analyst, if my efforts warrant. What if I applied this tool to Engelhart’s project? That would be interesting indeed.

Another fourfold Engelhart presents is that of the domains of conscious experience, or the self itself as system. This fourfold consists of the Real, the Actual, the Ideal, and the Literal, but my version is in disagreement with Engelhart’s as to the classification of integrative and differentiative for the Ideal and the Literal. My assignments match the conjunctive and disjunctive properties of the operators of Linear Logic. Also left out is the Universal and how it supersedes the Actual as we make a complete turn. I like my version because it is similar to Richard McKeon’s Things, Thoughts, Words, and Actions. Also T. S. Eliot’s Falls the Shadow.

Of course this is just a brief gloss of the rich ideas presented in Engelhart’s work. Another of his key concepts is that of wholeness, which I have completely omitted. I hope to return and write a better review at a later time. I’m glad to see that Engelhart’s dissertation is now available as a Kindle book for the low, low price of $1. It is much easier to read in this format! From the Amazon Book Description:

This study describes, as a single systemic model of inquiry, the context common to conscious experience of the phenomenon of inquiry. Data are the published texts of selected contemporary writers relevant to the question. The problem is to define a common systemic structure of inquiry in a context of consciousness. Research verifies that a specific structure is common to these writers and that their respective views are converging on this same structure.

Identifying a common structure involves reducing the textual descriptions of the writers to their systemically relevant essentials. Defining the essential elements and describing a reduction method depends heavily on theory of metaphor and metaphorical evolution. A history of the metaphorical structure relevant to inquiry is described and this structure is used as a basis for finding structure in the selected texts. Texts researched include evolutionary biology, sociology, psychology (phenomenology), and philosophy. This work replicates that done by Talcott Parsons in experimentally describing a voluntaristic theory of action. A wholistic theory of inquiry is described using the same systemic scheme.

The metaphysical approaches to inquiry of realism and idealism have converged on a common theoretical structure for describing inquiry. Commonalities emphasize systemic structure comprising the elements of function: purpose, process, content, and control. It has been necessary to distinguish between affectual and instrumental purposes, and between organic and mechanical function. The ontological essentiality of the structure reveals a necessary logical relationship between function, systemicity, wholeness, and rationality in human understanding. Continuing research in philosophy is crucial to expanding our understanding of the ontological and epistemological structural essentials of consciousness.

Human inquiry during the last century has specialized in the material realm of realism, objective description, and mechanical explanation. A wholistic theory of inquiry does not discount the contributions of realism-based science or idealism-based philosophy, but expands the horizons of each to include the other. Where mathematics provides essential tools for mechanical explanation, organic explanation still lacks abstract structural tools for describing conscious organic, including human, behavior. The intent of a wholistic theory of inquiry is to provide conceptual tools that support disciplined inquiry into conscious behavior.

References and Links:

L. Kurt Engelhart / Wholeness and the Rational Structure of Inquiring Systems: A Dissertation

http://lkengelhartassoc.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_faber

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Nature

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does

Notes:

I removed some text about the “Book of Nature”, because it needed more work. This mentioned the systems theory adage “the purpose of a system”, which can also tie into “meaning as use”. I also missed seeing an obvious thought that inquiry is making.

[*2.188, *3.104, *8.134]

alchemy, fourfolds

A Four-fold Riddle

February 19, 2015 Martin K. Jones Leave a comment

A rose I give to you
This rose so fresh with fragrance rare,
Its petals bringing joy to you
The fairest of the fair.
Oh roses are like memories
They fade and pass above
But you dear heart will e’er remain
My fading flower of forgotten love.

— Fading Flower of Forgotten Love by Agnes Ellicott Strong

John Crowley (author of the AEgypt Tetralogy) has mentioned several times in his books a curious list: dogs, stones, stars, and roses. What can he mean by this?

I propose this is a metaphor (Meta-four?) for the four colors of the Magnum Opus: yellow dogs, black stones, white stars, and red roses.

At least until I find out otherwise!

References:

http://watershade.net/wmcclain/AEgypt.html

http://watershade.net/wmcclain/love_sleep.html

http://watershade.net/wmcclain/jc-daemonomania.html

https://www.imayberry.com/tagsrwc/wbmutbb/anewsome/private/songs2.htm

[*8.13, *9.116]

fourfolds, Psychology

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

February 11, 2015 Martin K. Jones Leave a comment

It’s turtles all the way down!

— See Wikipedia.

Cowabunga!

Even the personalities of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles can be put in correspondence with the Four Temperaments!

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourTemperamentEnsemble

[*7.194, *8.127, *8.156]

alchemy, fourfolds

Magnum Opus

February 9, 2015 Martin K. Jones 1 Comment

The Magnum Opus, or Great Work, is a term from alchemy for the process of creating the Philosopher’s Stone, which is a substance that was purported to be able to turn stuff into gold, like King Midas’s Touch. Work and Stone can also be metaphors for perfecting the individual self, as gold was considered the perfect material.

The Great Work is often broken into four stages, identified by different colors also seen in the Medicine Wheel of Native Americans. Red is Rubedo or Iosis, White is Albedo or Leukosis, Black is Nigredo or Melanosis, and Yellow is Citrinitas or Xanthosis. The order is usually Black, White, Yellow, and then Red, through beginning to ending stages of the work.

Is this my Great Work? Will I create a Philosopher’s Stone?

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnum_opus_%28alchemy%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosopher%27s_stone

[*6.182, *8.12, *8.13, *8.124]

fourfolds, Philosophy

Kant’s Analytic-Synthetic Distinction

February 5, 2015 Martin K. Jones 6 Comments

One of the oldest and most problematic philosophical questions is the comparison of the a priori–a posteriori distinction with that of the analytic–synthetic distinction. Both are used in epistemology to divide knowledge, or true statements, between the innate and the learned, or the immediate and the earned, so they might even be considered the same. A priori and a posteriori statements are before “experience” and after it, respectively. Analytic statements are true only by their “meaning”, whereas synthetic statements are true only when facts about the world are combined consistently with that meaning.

It seems we have complicated the issue because now we must define and understand “experience” and “meaning”. However, these concepts are not independent because we must experience meaning, and meaning in turn conditions experience. In addition, even the a priori or the analytic are not innate or immediately obvious because deductions and the rules of logic require effort just like inductions do. Otherwise we would have Fitch’s Paradox: all truths are in fact known. What a muddle! So both experience and meaning are necessarily locked into a cooperative spiral dance to improve each other.

Even so, these two distinctions can be distinguished and combined into a fourfold.

The web site of Stephen R. Palmquist has a great wealth of material on fourfolds in relation to Kant’s as well as his own philosophy. From my own initial reading of his extensive material I have tried to choose a canonical Kantian fourfold which has the most relevance to my project.

The fourfold shown to the right Dr. Palmquist calls Kant’s “reflective perspectives on experience”. Consisting of the logical, the empirical, the transcendental, and the hypothetical, these facets bear a close analogical likeness to many of the fourfolds presented here.

Logical: Analytic a priori
Transcendental: Synthetic a priori
Hypothetical: Analytic a posteriori
Empirical: Synthetic a posteriori

Dr. Palmquist also has many of his own books available on his web site for the interested reader. I will certainly be returning to his web site in the future for much enjoyable study.

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic-synthetic_distinction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/analytic-synthetic/