Re: signals, communication, and bunnies

Phil Graham (pw.graham who-is-at student.qut.edu.au)
Wed, 10 Feb 1999 10:16:25 +1100

Maturana on time:

full text who-is-at

http://www.inteco.cl/biology/nature.htm

I have answered the question what distinctions we connote when we talk of
time? by showing: 1), that we do not and cannot connote an entity or
natural dimension that exists with independence of what we do as observers
(humans); and 2), by showing that we use in daily life the word time to
indicate or to connote an abstraction of our experiences of the succession
of processes. In other words, I have shown that the foundations of the
notion of time in any domain rests on the biology of the observer, not on
the domain of physics which is a domain of explanations of a particular
kind of experiential coherences of the observer. Furthermore, in this
process I have also shown that as time arises as a primary abstraction of
the flow of experiences
of the observer, it arises with directionality and irreversibility, and
that reversible time arises only as a secondary further abstraction of the
experiences of the observer that is possible only in a domain of
unidirectional and irreversible time. Finally, I claim that the notion of
time is frequently used as an explanatory principle giving to it a
trascendental ontological status.

The observer is not a physical entity, the observer is a manner of
operation of human beings in language. It is through the operation of the
observer that all domains of cognition arise, even the domain of observing.
Physics is the manner through which the observer explains with the
coherences of his or her experiences a particular domain of experiences
that is connoted with the word physics. Indeed, the observer itself arises
as an entity of which we observers may talk through the operation of the
observer constituting the fundament for all that we humans do. No doubt we
behave in our living as if we lived in a world that existed with
independence of what we do, and that we call reality. And it is basically
for this that we may ask about how do
we know reality, or time, as if we were properly referring to something
that exists independent from what we do. My concern has been different. My
question is not about reality of time, or any other kind of entity, as if
its independent existence could be taken for granted. My question is and
has been here about the experiences or operations that we do as observers
when we use
different notions, concepts or words as implying distinctions of entities
or features of an independent world.

---

Phil Phil Graham pw.graham who-is-at student.qut.edu.au http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/8314/index.html