Re: STIA: About Interventions?? LO3368

jack hirschfeld (jack@his.com)
Mon, 23 Oct 1995 00:10:44 -0400

Replying to LO3239 --

Michael, thanks for your thoughtful reply. I just read it today (a week
after you sent it) and it will take me a while to "unpack" it (to use your
phrase). However, something *did* become clearer for me as I read your
comment, and that is something about the way I think about things:

In my view, language is a tool probably unique to our species (despite
some speculations about porpoises and whales). Language works by parsing
the universe. In this conception of language, "emergence" and "system
dynamics" cannot be described, since they cease to exist when parsed.
They can only be imagined by a consciousness which creates a reality from
the parts. To me, the concept of "adaptive systems" is in part just a
projection of our own experience of learning.

I like your representation of language as a pragmatic method for
understanding a dynamic reality (I like very much the concept you have
articulated often on this list of using operating definitions), but I
don't feel that you use it effectively to describe your clear mental image
of non-linear causality.

So, sometimes I think you have communicated your conceptions of an
emergent universe of reality to me (or is that just me, laying my own
stuff over your words?) and sometimes I feel that you have obscured it
with words (or is that just me, resisting the rigorous application of
grammar and definitions toward development of common understanding?).

Either way, I find myself awestruck by the depth of your comprehension,
even when I feel lost in a sea of distinctions...

[...quote of Mike's message snipped by your host...]

--
Jack Hirschfeld         With the clear undertanding that
jack@his.com            this kind of thing can happen, shall we dance?