Linked to from: n_miscGlossary.php.
scientism
Racism (also called racialism) is the belief that humans can be divided into separate and exclusive biological entities called races; that there is a causal link between inherited physical traits and traits of personality, intellect, morality, and other cultural and behavioral features; and that some races are innately superior to others. Encyclopaedia Britannica, rtvd 14/3/2024.
While all psychological constructs must have biological correlates and all biological constructs must have psychological correlates, neither of these relationships is mechanically fixed. Only by adapting to physical and cultural feedback from the environment during ontogeny can the primordial and individual inheritance of a being meet its drive to survive. Biological structures, by providing adaptive substrate, enable experience to be iteratively processed and recursively stored — mutatis mutandis.
A society, in the language of it's culture, encodes assumptions fundamental to its reasoning. When ideas and actions align with these they then appear self-evident and reasonable to its citizens; when they do not they appear false, inconsequential or amateurish. This elementary mechanism hides fallacies of circular, self-supporting logic while insisting that alternative frameworks are not merely reasonable but beyond doubt — whether or not that doubt is reasonable. Although it is fallacious to hold that racist social analyses prove racist beliefs, within cultures built on racist assumptions racism appears to be reasoned.
Eugenics is part of a fundamentalist faith, racism. While it promotes itself as a science its 'reasoning' is no more than a way of expressing its prejudice. Science, on the other hand, is an elementary practice; an endless rigorous cycle of: observe; theorize; test, that strives to be unprejudiced.
Through genetic and epigenetic media, primordial and individual experience is inherited at conception. This then provides the 'base case' for the recursive function that drives the ONTOGENY of BEINGS, during which, biological structures, such as the brain, process the individual's lived EXPERIENCE mutatis mutandis, storing it, through a validation process that amends, corrects, integrates, expands and overwrites prior experience as necessary.
Societies follow an ad hoc route, yet by demanding a fully detailed map before altering their path alternatives are sterilized and their populations increasingly march in step.
Consider, for example, the 'doubts' broadcast about climate change science. Exon/Mobil, for instance, was able to successfully dispute the findings of climate science for years, despite its own scientists having modeled and predicted global warming with 'shocking skill and accuracy' since the 1970s.
biophysicality
If we accept that all descriptions of the ineffable are unavoidably metaphorical, and if creationist and anthropocentric teleologies and their concepts of the soul are set aside, then BEINGS can be defined simply as 'vehicles' of life and LIFE inferred recursively.
BEINGS, rather than merely 'wet' physical entities, are BIOPHYSICAL EXPRESSIONS organized and animated by the interpretations their BIOSEMIOTIC systems make of their external and internal environments.
Any psychological construct, to exist, must have a BIOPHYSICAL correlate To survive, every BIOPHYSICAL construct requires a psychological correlate. Psychology, in actuality, is a study of METABIOPHYSICAL expression.
Those attributes of BIOSEMIOTIC systems, which in humans are referred to as awareness, consciousness, EGO and mind, are PERCEPTIONS, generated from the information that the SENSES of a BEING provide of NOUMENA that it encounters — in the same way as the PERCEPTION of colour is.
wellness
In an individual, the development of wellness and illness is a function of the interaction between their BIOPHYSICAL actuality and their environment. It is this system as a whole that is impacted by any medical or psychological interventions, and any social support and care, that the individual receives or is privated of.
Research into cancer and other diseases has long since identified the existence and primacy of METABIOPHYSICAL systems, and the need to address these as a whole; however, despite the work of the WHO modern societies and their BROADCASTING systems appear obdurate, discounting 'holism' and instead promoting increasingly reductionist models.
MEANING, is that which a BEING PERCEIVES of the EXPRESSION of a . It is inherited, encoded and developed through the reference-frame of the individual's ONTOGENY. Different reference-frames then inevitably arise.
Those BEINGS less able to recognize and reconcile differing reference-frames are at greater risk in social groups of being misinformed and deceived.
Ultimately, short term success is an insufficient guide for future action. Locusts are successful but find themselves unable to escape developing from their peaceful co-existance as individuals into the cannibalistic wars of their swarms.
BIOSEMIOSIS is the recursive process of RECOGNITION through which every BEING generates MEANING by aligning its PERCEPTION of current EXPERIENCE with those previously EMBODIED in itself, or externally, either by itself or through inheritance. ENDOSEMIOSIS and EXOSEMIOSIS then refer, respectively, to the RECOGNITION of internal and external NOUMENA.
BIOSEMIOSIS is the recursive process of RECOGNITION through which every BEING generates MEANING by aligning its PERCEPTION of current EXPERIENCE with those previously EMBODIED in itself, or externally, either by itself or through inheritance. ENDOSEMIOSIS and EXOSEMIOSIS then refer, respectively, to the RECOGNITION of internal and external NOUMENA.
EMBODIMENT here then refers both to the biophysical EXPRESSION of BIOSEMIOSIS and the semiosis that biophysical EXPRESSION represents. In this, embodied and extended cognition are descriptions of BIOSEMIOSIS.
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.
Here, metasystem refers to a general, rather than to a restricted, controlling or organizational system which maintains the homeostasis necessary for the functioning of a system and its subsystems.
functioning, disability and health
First drafted by the WHO in 1980, the International Classification of Functioning (the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health), is an holistic overview of wellness and illness. Despite its publication, and the fact that today biopsychosocial models are taught in medical schools, the significance and impact on social organization and its institutions of these models might appear to citizens to have been relatively minimal — perhaps because of the powerful lobbies that work to promote a fundamentalist belief in scientific reductionism.
footnotes of n_Einstein_Translation.php included in entryNote.php, e_Einstein_HumanDelusion.php, and e_personalMeta.php.
my translation
Einstein wrote the above words, in ink (bold emphasis added), in a note now held in the Albert Einstein Archives, Jerusalem. The translation I have made of them, and quoted from, is made in light of the translation that appears underneath them on the note and written in another hand.
There seem to me several reasons to make another translation: to reflect the gender neutrality of the German more consistently; to echo Einstein's use of both the word delusion and illusion; and to better reflect the certitude of the note's opening argument — carried in the brevity of the original German yet somehow stunted in the translation on the note itself in English.
The translation I offer here then, supported by translations by Google on 6 March 2024, is based on that written in pencil on the original note:—
This translation, in pencil on the original note, became the text of the condolence letter sent from Einstein to Dr. Marcus on 12 February 1950. The first two sentences of it were then used to open the letter of condolence sent on the 4 March 1950 to Norman Salt.
delusions and illusions
Einstein spoke the refined German of the Bildungsbürgertum, a language characterized by its precision. It might the be reasonable to assume, as an inspection of Einstein's note also suggests, that his use of the word Täuschung (delusion) twice and Illusion once, was considered not careless.
Etymologically the word delusion implies an action, a deceiving, referring here to that suffered by human beings through our consciousness, through which we perceive a deceptive appearance, the illusion of being "separated from the rest".
Although I believe the translations that I have found are faithful, quotations, stripped of their context can lose much of their quality. Transliteration of punctuation, for instance, can result in an English that makes their authors sound coarse or uneducated; and 'grammatical transliterations' may substitute gender bias for the gender neutrality of an original.
Where I have edited translations it has been only in order to address issues of punctuation, prosody, and inference that I felt detracted from the content of the originals. The edits have been made with due diligence and, although I am not a professional translator or writer, I believe they are both faithful, and required to make the fluency, erudition, and sensibility of the originals explicit. Original texts are provided for readers to draw their own conclusions.
Footnote {delusion01a} of n_Einstein_Translation.php.
The prefix "meta-" is used here as in the term meta-language — a system of symbols or signs (a language) used to describe or contextualize another language.
The article, from which the quote was taken, although apparently accessible in 2024, has now been taken down by Stanford Medicine. The new article (at Stanford research builds link between sleep, cancer progression) still refers to Spiegal's work, but the expurgated quote there now, intentionally or otherwise, seems to downplay the research and to distance Stanford from Spiegal and the view he expressed.
life
Life is the state of being.
Being is the condition of BEINGS.
A BEING is descended from a BEING.
I am a BEING.
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 in different reference frames.
Noumenon, is a Greek word meaning "that which is perceived". It is the word Kant used to identify the thing-in-itself, the underlying reality that is then recognized by an observer as a SIGN.
Kant referred to recognition of the thing-in-itself as perception. Here however, PERCEPTION is used to label one of the four stages in the process of BIOSEMIOSIS that is bootstrapped by RECOGNITION.
Communicate: to convey information through a system of arbitrary signals.
Language: a system of arbitrary signals used to communicate information.
Meaning: the sense or reference of an expression.
Recognize: to know something as the same as, or belonging to the same class as, something known before.
Semantic: of or relating to meaning.
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/.
science
Science is an elementary practice. Scientism is a belief. Eugenics and the Holocaust it drove are among the brutal consequences and stark reminders of not recognizing this distinction.
Hormone, from the Greek, hormon, meaning 'that which sets in motion'.
from the Greek, akrasia, meaning 'loss of free will'.