Thrival of the Fitting
April 19, 2007 9:46 AM   Subscribe

Alan Rayner Making the case for Inclusionality.
posted by RoseyD (36 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
"My Hope: To help develop a more empathic, more fulfilling way of thinking/feeling about relationships amongst ourselves, other organisms and our living space, which acknowledges the fact that the boundaries we inhabit are not absolute and fixed but rather inform dynamic, interactive domains that allow a rich variety of patterns to emerge and transform our lives."

A D M Rayner
posted by RoseyD at 10:03 AM on April 19, 2007


Interesting stuff. The irony is that the consciousness that conceives these ideas is the result of a long and competitive process of anit-inclusional natural selection.
I'm not convinced we can override our hard wiring.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:07 AM on April 19, 2007


anti-inclusional
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:08 AM on April 19, 2007


Uncertainty is benefitial.
; )
posted by RoseyD at 10:10 AM on April 19, 2007


Only beneficial ignoring for the time constraints.
The earth will not sustain this madness.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:17 AM on April 19, 2007


for duh
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:18 AM on April 19, 2007


Then it gets down to the final conclusion rapidly.

This begs the question of sustainability of a machine planet vs. the sustainability of a biological one, doesn't it?

If we worked at it a bit we'd have at least a real good script for sci-fi.
posted by RoseyD at 10:23 AM on April 19, 2007


What a bizarre, yet illuminating, thesis.

To remove space outside of content, and so, in effect, outside of ourselves, is tantamount literally to removing our inner source of motivation, and believing in a primarily static existence that can only be moved by external force.

particuarly apparent in cho's manifesto.

Anti-culture is a paradoxical organization, characteristic of disconcerted modern human societies, which is founded on the alienation and consequent denial of the creative togetherness of self and other. It is the product of rationalistic philosophies that unrealistically abstract spatial context out of material content.

fascinating, as this statement could apply to all western philosophy, but he stops short of saying that. (that is, "thinking" as defined by both sides of the rationalist/idealist spectrum could be considered "unrealistically abstract".)

on preview: however, rational thinking also has other, more pragmatic, justifications - see eliminative materialism.

the question of whether we are willing to live with atrocities brought about by a rather loud minority of anti-culturalists (see iraq, see virginia tech), as an expense of modern society, is i think one we find too difficult to answer, or are not willing to face. which feeds back in the loop, creating more fear, anger, and alienation.
posted by phaedon at 10:24 AM on April 19, 2007


I'm not big on competition as a way of life (old hippie), and I don't think competition, per-se, is evil; but, the ends certainly can be.

F'rinstance, if the end of competition is to come up with a cure for cancer, then it's probably good. If the end is to come up with a cure for cancer in order to patent a drug and get rich, then maybe it's not so good. Americans have been "trained" to such a degree that we're really good at the latter, but not so much at the former.

I think that the commercial "powers that be" are harming us greatly to the extent that they are making great strides in making information of all kinds "anti-inclusional": medical advancements are patented and locked away, government proceedings are back-channeled and obscured, etc.

I would posit that most people want to be inclusional, but the system has been rigged in such a way as to keep information needed to make compassionate and informed decisions away from them. If you aren't aware that "us and them" is truly possible, then it's easy to revert to "us or them".

Maybe my foil hat just needs relined....
posted by Benny Andajetz at 10:24 AM on April 19, 2007


RoseyD: This begs the question of sustainability of a machine planet vs. the sustainability of a biological one, doesn't it?

If we worked at it a bit we'd have at least a real good script for sci-fi.


Yep.

Although I dunno if it's been done in so many words...
posted by LordSludge at 10:31 AM on April 19, 2007


Funny, I was thinking about these ideas in the last couple of days in the context of the VT shootings. It is becoming more and more evident that Cho was a very sick boy, and that his victims might as well have been killed by an earthquake. But people are upset if you remove the evil card from the deck.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:33 AM on April 19, 2007


I'm sorry, no. This is a rambling screed that haphazardly mixes discliplines and relies on ambiguous terms to conclude support a belief, not a conclusion, but a belief that the current society is bad.

First of all, this is nonsense:

It is the product of rationalistic philosophies that unrealistically abstract spatial context out of material content. These illusory philosophies, which are inherent in neo-Darwinian interpretations of evolutionary processes, are enshrined mathematically in Euclidean geometry and discrete numbers, and scientifically in notions of objectivity and falsifiability. Their underlying anti-logic of one against other inevitably exacerbates conflict and so gives rise to profound environmental, social and psychological damage.

And I mean that quite literally. It makes no sense, and every adverb and adjective in there is unsupported, never mind the statements themselves. Do rationalistic philosophies in fact abstract spatial context out of material content? And What does that even mean? Isn't every discussion of the 'context' of a thing an abstraction of the thing? Furthermore, why is it unrealistic? What makes it so?


the boundaries we inhabit are not absolute and fixed but rather inform dynamic, interactive domains

What?
posted by Pastabagel at 10:37 AM on April 19, 2007 [3 favorites]


But people are upset if you remove the evil card from the deck.

Interesting echoes of "the authority problem." i.e. shock and awe. Authority externalized (through punishing force) is authority decieved by it's own influence. Nothing fails like success in that scenario.
posted by RoseyD at 10:42 AM on April 19, 2007


Do rationalistic philosophies in fact abstract spatial context out of material content?

Yeah, this sort of philosophical writing is certainly more prevalent in europe than it is here in the united states, arguably for political reasons. (that is to say, philosophy as an academic discipline is the handmaiden of hard science - i mean, its a simple question of survivability.)

As for spatial context out of material content argument - I mean, that was my point, that is what thinking is. A little too broad of a condemnation to not end up being self-denouncing.

enshrined mathematically in Euclidean geometry

this, i suppose, comes from the idea of things such as "1" and "2" and "3" - however, number do not "exist" in nature, despite being one of the best ways to describe phenomena.

objectivity and falsifiability.

again, dinstinctions that help us better understand the world. but no present in nature.

this guy is basically taking a stand against western philosophy, which personally, is much to my liking. when i went to college, i thought rorty was a god, and in parts of his book he subtly hints that post-modernism may develop into a more "buddhist approach" (see consequences of pragmatism).

Their underlying anti-logic of one against other inevitably exacerbates conflict and so gives rise to profound environmental, social and psychological damage.

again, defining objects leads to distinctions, and distinctions inevitably lead to conflict.
posted by phaedon at 10:44 AM on April 19, 2007


This appears to be an output of the postmodern essay generator.
posted by justanexcitableboy at 10:56 AM on April 19, 2007 [1 favorite]


Although I dunno if it's been done in so many words...

The words of an artist are slow, but oh, so fine...

Kinda like the mills of God...
posted by RoseyD at 10:58 AM on April 19, 2007


I think this essay uses a lot of mathematical and scientific concepts without really understanding what they really mean.
posted by demiurge at 11:10 AM on April 19, 2007


I think you'd be wrong.
posted by RoseyD at 11:12 AM on April 19, 2007


Well.

Although deterministic and stochastic approaches are often regarded as discrete alternatives vying with one another over which provides the 'better' model of natural processes, it is clear that each is as unrealistic as the other in ignoring the inner-outer connectedness of space. Moreover, each contains a view of the relation between space and substance that the other misses: one envisages absolute freedom of discretely bounded entities/events in boundless open space, the other envisages no freedom in fully bounded systems of closed space.

Neither stochastic and deterministic approaches to mathematical modeling have anything to do with 'absolute freedom' or 'fully bounded systems'.


Although these ideas coming from modern physics and mathematics therefore go some of the way to take us out of the traps of purely deterministic and stochastic treatments, they remain unrealistic and space-excluding through their implicit assumptions of fixed geometrical and numerical boundary limits. They are therefore internally inconsistent and paradoxical in their application, as was revealed by Kurt Godel's theorem of incompleteness.

Godel's incompleteness theorm has to do with unprovable but true statements in consistent axiomatic systems. The essay uses the term internally inconsistent to describe the systems, but Godel only talked about systems that were provably consistent.
posted by demiurge at 11:17 AM on April 19, 2007


Well, I think the term "envisions" is key. As distinct from "proves."

Aside from the referential incompleteness, I don't think he is absent an understanding of the meaning he is referring to.
posted by RoseyD at 11:25 AM on April 19, 2007


He does use the term 'envisages', but still, neither stochastic or deterministic approaches to modeling need 'fully bounded' or 'discretely bounded' anything to work. The question of boundedness is completely orthogonal to the issue of stochastic or deterministic.

He also uses a simple nonlinear system as sort of a strange straw-man argument. He gives a system and says it could be used for modeling a leaky balloon. He says:

The simulated dynamics are then necessarily referenced to a sequential time scale (hence the term 'feedback'), even though it is clear from the balloon example that the reciprocal transformations in inner and outer space are simultaneous. As the surface informing inner and outer space moves in response to input or output, so both inner and outer space reconfigure.

He criticizes the very simple model for not being complex enough to model what he wants! It is not as if this example is the state-of-the-art in balloon modeling.
posted by demiurge at 11:42 AM on April 19, 2007


That's a very fair argument to make. I don't disagree at all. I think he used the example sufficiently well to say what he wanted to say, philosophically or, perhaps, artistically.

To paraphrase Picasso -- talking about art -- we all know that science is not truth. Science
is a lie that makes us realize the truth.
posted by RoseyD at 11:57 AM on April 19, 2007


Considering that the guy's parameter is only "envision" and not "prove," why can't put his point more simply? He's using the terminology and rhetoric of languages that were developed to provide proof of difficult scientific and mathemathcal concepts. He's trying to borrow their authority to awe you. But the real language of envisioning is nothing like this (see, for instance, William Blake).
posted by Faze at 12:07 PM on April 19, 2007


Heh. This is peripatetic philosophy-talk for boy-geniuses.
posted by phaedon at 12:08 PM on April 19, 2007


(see, for instance, William Blake)

Or take a hop in the wayback machine...


This body, Arjuna, is called the field. He who knows this is called the knower of the field.

Know that I am the knower of all the fields of my creation; and that the wisdom which sees the field and the knower of the field is true wisdom.

(Krishna to Arjuna)
Bhagavad Gita
13,1-2
posted by RoseyD at 12:18 PM on April 19, 2007


Krishna: Out standing in his field.


(sorry, couldn't resist)
posted by Benny Andajetz at 1:09 PM on April 19, 2007



What the guy completely misses is that actual Neo-Darwinism recognizes the evolution of altruism and cooperation as a critical part of human survival.

In fact, many evolutionists argue that the mismatch between our individualistic culture and our evolutionary roots in small, cooperative groups is a large source of people's unhappiness.

Of course, the problem here is that cooperation may have evolved in part to survive intergroup competition (ie, we cooperate so we can kill the "bad" outsiders/other groups) so the positive, humane side of people is intricately linked with the not-so-nice "us v. them" stuff.
posted by Maias at 1:43 PM on April 19, 2007


There is no critical part of human survival that I'm aware of. Though some neo-conservatives might disagree. Nice is such a four letter word and I cannot imagine it being the "result" of evolution, even accidentally.

And furthermore, evolutionists arguing is not evolution anymore than the class of elephants is an elephant.

Bertrand Russell said that.

Thank you BR.
posted by RoseyD at 2:14 PM on April 19, 2007


It's misleading to suggest that Russell's logical types argument sheds any light on whether or not there are "critical" aspects of human survival, particularly when there are obvious, albeit non-political, counterpoints. We need air to live. The world is round. But how do we explain away this obviousness? That's the epistemological banana peel, if you ask me.

That is to say, some would argue that we can make objective statements about the nature of reality, albeit the nature of the link between what we say and we really is, is up for dispute. Of course the question of what really is in the first place is an equally troublesome nuisance.

I suppose I understand your point - don't confuse the map with the territory. But strictly speaking, "evolutionists arguing is not evolution" is not an appropriate rewording of Russell's point, and changing Picasso's line to mention science instead of art is not in fact "paraphrasing".
posted by phaedon at 2:42 PM on April 19, 2007



Nice is a common result of evolution if by nice you mean cooperative. Think bees. Think humans in many instances. Think bonobos.

Your imagination doesn't appear to be very fruitful, RoseyD-- are you arguing that cooperative species don't exist? Or that they didn't evolve?

Many social species would simply not survive without cooperation-- ie, cooperation is critical to their survival as a species. Human birth, for example, is extremely difficult for a woman to undergo alone-- women who come from groups that cooperate to aid birth are more likely to have surviving offspring than those who do not help each other give birth. This is evolution 101.

Further, an enormous amount of research shows how cooperation and altruism can arise under certain circumstances and mathematically explores which ones: basically, situations in which organisms that cooperate outreproduce those which compete. There's a lot of
simulation work with game theory that demonstrates this.

Maps and territories haven't got anything to do with it.
posted by Maias at 3:25 PM on April 19, 2007


I like it.
He looks in his empty heart and finds nothing.
He looks in his empty mind and finds nothing.

He really puts the DRIVE in DRIVEL.
posted by hexatron at 3:53 PM on April 19, 2007


Your imagination doesn't appear to be very fruitful, RoseyD-- are you arguing that cooperative species don't exist? Or that they didn't evolve?

I wouldn't dare. But I would question the authenticity of evolution=competition / competition=evolution. The equivalence is assumed. Although, it is imaginative.
posted by RoseyD at 4:02 PM on April 19, 2007


dude needs a brain enema so he can more easily take his dump.
posted by 3.2.3 at 4:13 PM on April 19, 2007


Yeah, this is really a bunch of blah blah blah.

It is, as far as I'm concerned, 3rd cousins with Timecube....
posted by MythMaker at 4:57 PM on April 19, 2007


If someone used the word 'inclusionality' when actually speaking to me, I'd smack 'em one in the chops.

Think deeply of simple things, and leave this kind of polysyllabic obscuranterrific wankery to those with too much wit and too little wisdom.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:22 PM on April 19, 2007


RoseyD, where did I ever equate evolution and competition? My entire point was that cooperation also evolved and that the research on the evolution of cooperation was ignored in the article.
posted by Maias at 6:59 AM on April 23, 2007


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