Origami in reverse

α2    

unfolding expression

We had fed the heart on fantasies, The heart's grown brutal from the fare; More Substance in our enmities Than in our love;
Published 30 Sep '24, this edit: 1 May '25.

contexts

I emigrated long after the WATERSHED began. Like a child, not realizing I was lost I wandered further and further, looking for the common ground I had assumed lay behind words and smiles.

Moments of insight brought some success and seemed worth recording  but required deeper examination, and instead led to the simple paradigm of learning and development published here now.

Most of the paradigm is commonplace. Many key words in it then assume their definitions from habit. The definitions of others are disputed. To avoid reflexive explanations and unnecessary confusion, these words have been EMPHASIZED.

inside out, outside in

The outline of the paradigm published here is less a story than a diagram of frames and perspectives.


  frames and perspectives  (interactive).

Frame Θ. Internal documents and external resources underpinning the site.

Frame A. Meta-documents e.g the preamble (A1) and this introduction (A2).

Frame B. Literal and metaphorical. Language registers contextualize frame C.

The questions we ask and answer are founded on assumptions in the languages we use. Literalism and fundamentalism coextend; the temporal and spiritual coexist. more

Frame C. Recognizing patterns. Biosemiosis predicates perspectives D and E.

Disentangled from belief, biosemiosis (informed action) is fundamental, and sufficient to derive a complete description of both individual and social development. more

Perspective D. Individual learning and development. The integration of experience and expression in ontogeny.

Beliefs about psychology, medicine, and education, hidden in everyday conversation, discount the fact that we evolved, exist, and develop as parts of societies. Well-being coextends with fluency. more

Perspective E. Societal learning and development. Identity, experience and expression in societal ontogeny.

Broadcasting nurtures cultures. Through informed actions individuals adapt to these, reproducing as parts of them and building the environments that select success. more
Expression is intuitive, words narcotize transforming us with their dreams, their technologies offering convenience like mousetraps offering cheese.

The WATERSHED refers here to the transitional period between the Powell Memorandum of 1971, and the full commercialization of the internet in 1995. In the middle of this, the IBM-Microsoft contract of 1980 brought together the politics of neo-corporatism together with the means to drive a semio-societal revolution — one that is now transforming human relations, experience, perception, and cognition.neo-corporatism


The Powell Memorandum of 1971 ...


The IBM-Microsoft contract of 1980 ...



open quotation markThe main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it?



open quotation markA critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought, the practices that we accept rest on.
Michel Foucault in Practicing criticism, or, is it really important to think?, an interview by Didier Eribon, 1981, in Politics, Philosophy, Culture, ed. L. Kriztman, 1988, p. 155.


Linked to from: A2-Content.php; n_A2_outro.php.

quoteleft.. words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind. Not only do words infect, egotize, narcotize, and paralyse, but they enter into and colour the minutest cells of the brain.
Rudyard Kipling; in a speech to the Royal College of Surgeons, London, 1923.

Words and language are 'tools' of expression; semiotic adjuncts. biosemiosis is fundamental and coextensive with life. We, and all other beings, depend upon it, exploit it, and are colonized by it. Communication technology then is effectively 'addictive', changing our perception, our lives, societies and selves, as these grow, develop, and adapt to it.

quoteleftWhat is it that we human beings ultimately depend on? We depend on our words. We are suspended in language.
Niels Bohr, physisist, founder of the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of Copenhagenin 'Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists', 1963.



virtuality refers to abstractions of actuality that pre-process experience.




We recognize what we see, this is our perception, inherited then learnt from experience. We see what we expect to see, accordingly constructing and integrating the data that our eyes, and other senses are capable of recording.



The term being, is used here for all forms of life, whether multicellular (e.g. humans, ants, plants, etc); unicellular (e.g. bacteria, archaea, and some algae), or both (e.g. slime molds), and to other metasystems (e.g. jellyfish, and societies, of ants, humans, deer etc.




Bioemiosis proceeds through recognition — through current sense-data that a being perceives then being recognized by it; as being the same as, or belonging to the same class as, something the being has sensed or perceived before. This then is a recursive process, its first iteration (or 'base case') generating meaning by matching current sense-data and perceptions to those that have previously been recognized, recorded, embodied, and inherited.

Here embodiment refers to the biophysical expression of semiosis and to the semiosis that biophysical expression represents; and embodied cognition is then simply a description of biosemiosis.


NB. The definitions used here may vary considerably, both in degree and specificity, to those used elsewhere; nonetheless, they also overlap with them considerably.


A metatransition is a metasystem transition to EITHER a more complex OR a simpler structure, ultimately leading to a transitory OR a permanent evolutionary transition in individuality.

NB. The labels, 'more complex', 'simpler', 'transitory' and 'permanent', here refer to relative positions on subjectively defined axis, not to any objective measurements.



Here, refers to the general, rather than a restricted, controlling or organizational system which maintains the homeostasis necessary for the functioning of a system and its subsystems.




Please see: here for a summary and references.



biophysical nature


19 Nov. 2024, edit 6 May. 2025.

If anthropocentric and creationist teleologies are set-aside, and it is accepted as unavoidable that descriptions of the ineffable are metaphorical, then BEINGS, unencumbered by anthropocentric concepts of the soul, can be defined simply as 'vehicles' of life  and life inferred recursively.

BEINGS are not only physical, they are animate and BIOPHYSICAL — the term BIOPHYSICAL then is used here to refer to their actuality as distinct to their BIOSEMIOTIC life. Their META-EXPRESSION (the prefix "meta-" used here as in metalanguage - a system of "signs and symbols", a language, used to describe a language) is BIOSEMIOSIS, the system of "signs and symbols" that articulates the internal and external EXPRESSION of BEINGS.

The abstracted, inferred psychological attributes of BEINGS — in humans referred to as awareness, consciousness, EGO and mind — are METABIOPHYSICAL characteristics; the PERCEPTIONS that we generate from the information our senses provide of the NOUMENA we actually EXPERIENCE — generated in much the same way as our PERCEPTIONS of colour are. In actuality, psychology then is either BIOSEMIOSIS, or METABIOLOGY, or it is the study and classification of the METABIOPHYSICAL.


wellness and illness

In an individual, the evolution of wellness and illness is a function of the interaction of their BIOPHYSICAL and METABIOPHYSICAL actuality with their environment. The social support and care that they receive, or are privated of, and any medical or psychological intervention then impact this system as a whole. Wellness and illness are 'psychosomatic'.

Research into cancer and other diseases has identified both the existence and the primacy of these METABIOPHYSICAL systems, and for various reasons of the need to address them as wholes; however, the institutions of modern societies and their broadcasting, despite increasingly appear obdurately set on discounting it in favour of reductionist models.



© robin greaves, 2018-2025.

another inconvenient truth


The International Classification of Functioning (International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health), an holistic overview of wellness and illness, was first drafted by WHO, an international 'political' body, a quarter of a century ago in 1980. Despite this, and the fact that "biopsychosocial" models are taught in medical schools today, their significance to social organization and its institutions appears minimal, perhaps because of the powerful lobbies that work to maintain and promote the fundamentalist belief of scientific reductionism.

After nine years of international revision efforts coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Health Assembly on May 22, 2001, approved the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health and its abbreviation of "ICF." This classification was first created in 1980 ... by WHO to provide a unifying framework for classifying the consequences of disease. ... Functioning and disability are viewed as a complex interaction between the health condition of the individual and the contextual factors of the environment as well as personal factors. The picture produced by this combination of factors and dimensions is of "the person in his or her world." The classification treats these dimensions as interactive and dynamic rather than linear or static. It allows for an assessment of the degree of disability, although it is not a measurement instrument. It is applicable to all people, whatever their health condition. The language of the ICF is neutral as to etiology, placing the emphasis on function rather than condition or disease. It also is carefully designed to be relevant across cultures as well as age groups and genders, making it highly appropriate for heterogeneous populations.

"When people originally believed that the earth was flat, if that had not been questioned, science wouldn’t have advanced this far. ..saying (the) biopsychosocial model has no value, and that it is "woo", is very similar to that." Sandyshore - university researcher and wikipedian.



open quotation markHuman beings are spatially and temporally limited parts of the whole that we call "universe"; yet we experience ourselves and our feelings as separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness.    Albert Einstein, 1950.
quoteleftI'd like people to reconceptualize cancer as a biological event that triggers stress responses affecting how the disease progresses... Managing those stress responses by adopting healthy eating and exercise habits, getting a good night's sleep, and finding good emotional and social support, should be regarded as much a part of cancer treatment as chemotherapy or radiation.
David Spiegel, MD, Stanford University Medical Center. Stanford research builds link between sleep, cancer progression, Stanford Medicine News Center, 2003.

The article, from which the above quote was taken, although apparently accessible in 2024, has been taken down by Stanford Medicine. The new article (at https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2004/02/link-between-sleep-cancer-progression-explored-by-stanford-researcher.html) still refers to Spiegal's work, but the expurgated quote there now seems to downplay the research and distance Stanford from Spiegal and the view he expressed.



© robin greaves, 2018-2025.

family inheritance


a recursive definition 10 Mar 2025.

Life is the state of being. Being is the condition of BEINGS.

A BEING is a descendant of a BEING.

I am a BEING.



© robin greaves, 2018-2025.

It is as correct or incorrect to say that hormones create love as it is to say that love creates hormones. Love is not definable in the way that hormones are; they are terms of different reference frames.


Noumenon, is a Greek word meaning "that which is perceived". It is used here in that simple sense. Although Kant was the first person to use the term as a loanword, it is not used here to refer to his philosophy generally.

Kant adopted the Greek word, noumenon, to refer to the thing-in-itself so that this underlying reality might more readily be distinguished in discussion from the recognition by an observer of it that then renders it as a sign. However, whereas Kant referred to this recognition as perception — and to the perception of the thing-in-itself as a phenomenon — here the term perception is used simply to refer to a specific step in the process of biosemiosis.



A language is a system of arbitrary signals used to communicate information. To communicate, is to convey information through a system of arbitrary signals. Semantic means of or relating to meaning. Meaning refers to the sense or reference of an expression. To recognize, is to know something as the same as, or belonging to the same class as, something known before.


The definitions above, apart from those for meaning and recognize which are after those in the Collins English Dictionary, are after those in the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.



quoteleftHydrozoa show great diversity of lifestyle; some species maintain the polyp form for their entire life and do not form medusae at all Polyps of some species propagate vegetatively, forming colonies.. polymorphism occurs in colonies of some species of hydrozoans and anthozoans, the polyps being specialized for functions such as feeding, defense, and sexual reproduction.



Ruppert, Edward E.; Fox, Richard, S.; Barnes, Robert D. (2004). Invertebrate Zoology, 7th edition. Cengage Learning. pp. 148-174; cited in Jellyfish, Taxonomy (list item: Staurozoa), Wikipedia..



Fautin, Daphne G. and Sandra L. Romano. 1997. Cnidaria. Sea anemones, corals, jellyfish, sea pens, hydra. Version 24 April 1997. http://tolweb.org/Cnidaria/2461/1997.04.24 in The Tree of Life Web Project, http://tolweb.org/.



Anthropocentrism is the narcissistic belief that the human species is the central fact and final aim of a universe that should therefore be understood in terms of human experience, needs, and values.




Ribeiroia in herons, fungi on beetles, or the staph in our guts, win minds and hearts over to serve other gods. Shut outside our doors of reason, flocking crows and horses, otters, gorillas, chimps and geese, play follow the leader. What makes us special. Or more so than dogs.


scientism


open quotation markThe whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.    Albert Einstein.

Science is an elementary practice. Scientism is a belief. Eugenics and the Holocaust are among the brutal consequences and stark reminders of not recognizing this distinction..




from: Physics and Reality, published in the Journal of the Franklin Institute, Vol. 221, Issue 3, March 1936, pp. 349-382.


from: "The Great Chain of Semiosis, Investigating the Steps in the Evolution of Semiotic Competence." p.8, Jesper Hoffmeyer & Frederik Stjernfelt, September 2015, Biosemiotics 9(1) DOI:10.1007/s12304-015-9247-y (Emphasis added).



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