Note towards a foundational phenomenology of analogic/discrete

[BjørnMagnhildøen]

10.05.2005 17:55:05, Alan Sondheim <sondheim at panix.com> wrote:

>Until we understand the deep ontological and epistemological issues invol-
>ving the analogic and discrete (digital), we will get nowhere.

Notes - there's another quite obvious approach that goes via our neuro-
physiology, the foundational brain split into hemispheres and constitute a 
physical double-being - analogic-digital. I'm not sure if you would regard 
it as a metaphor - in a way the metaphor is the working of the analogic and 
to disregard it is to disregard the analogic - but again, it's wild and on 
the chaotic side, on the wave side.

>One is unwilling to give up the primacy of the physical because of its
>immensity. It is difficult, even from a platonic viewpoint, to comprehend
>the immensity of the abstract as well - it pales by comparison. As for
>consciousness, it seems the weakest of all, certainly the most fragile. It
>is within consciousness that the annihilation and creation of historical
>memory occur.

>There are no events in the abstract. Consciousness and the physical are
>temporal; the physical and the abstract describe spaces; consciousness and
>the abstract describe networks. Within consciousness, from the network to
>the membrane. Within the physical, from spacetime to its incoherence. And
>within the abstract, axiomatics to their dissolution.

>Mathesis tends towards rounding and the discrete (digital); consciousness
>tends towards sharpening and the analogic; the physical world collapses
>among them.

Kind of parallells the workings of our hemispheres. The left tends to the 
digital, the right to the analogic, detailed and concrete.

>To think _fully_ the a/d divide/continuum (along with this infinite reg-
>ress) is to assume familiarity with mathematical physics, phenomenology,
>engineering, neurophysiology, as well as philosophy, aesthetics, computer
>science. Without these backgrounds, analysis remains on the level of life-
>world phenomena, the symptomatic. As the symptomatic expands, so does the
>metaphoric superstructure; before long, one is off and running in any
>number of useless directions as image builds on image. This is the wave
>part of the phenomenon; the collapse is absent as testability recedes. My
>personal danger is to avoid confusion on one hand, and these metaphoric
>ruminations as anything but fantasy, on the other.

I agree, metaphor is on the the wave part, which is a metaphorical 
statement. See the dangers of one-sided research on only the left 
hemisphere = the history of neurology. The right hemispheres represent the 
excesses, the left the lack. In our physical constitution these are 
interweaved - foreground:background, text:context, digital:analogic. To 
call it a superstructure is a view from the left, as would to call it 
excesses, sicknesses. On their own terms they're substructures, closer to 
reality - meaning in concreteness and detail, richness - would we have a 
world without it? The digital left hemisphere, the human computer, is built 
on the 'lesser' right hemisphere, the animal brain.


>There are also the results in microsound, in digital audio reproduction,
>in compression algorithms and raster scans at the limits, in the mathe-
>matics of human cognition, in cellular automata. Expansion frays at the
>edges; nothing is achieved. Just as confusion is the result of metaphoric
>expansion, it is also the result of an efflorescence of roots.

Efflorescence of roots seems a good expression of its working and 
production, the right. Confusion, nothing is achieved - you're talking from 
the left, the human computer - but with only the human computer also 
nothing is achieved, it's powerless without its roots, a simulation and 
model, no 'reality'.

Agree with reduction, aura, gestalt, surplus.

>Gestalt is both surplus and reduction. The inhabiting of text is analogic,
>no matter the discrete (ascii, tcp/ip) elements (protocols) at work.
>Between inhabitation and the seizure of the symbol lies anxiety, dis/com-
>fort, the political.

Saying we use both our hemisphere, and the workings between, the gap and 
discomfort, our internal split.

>The collapse of the wave equation, Penrose's U -> R, Bell's theorem,
>_bother_ us. Communication leaks; the mechanics transform (in Irigarayan
>terms) from fluid to mechanical to the uneasy gnawing of a _mix._ Think of
>Kristeva's abject for example, or Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel's work. Think
>of a kind of transitional object carrying the all-too-evident seeds of
>decay within it, the teddy-bear leaking stuffing.

Re-introducing the metaphor, the metaphor disturbs us?

>The bothering is political; we would do anything to erase it! Purity, the
>sensual absence of corruption, is primary to governance, where, for
>example, justice is forced into equivalence with law.

But the metaphor is also the world, at the analogic root, and the digital 
is built upon it, the physical workd collapsed from it.

>One should learn from the R Yes|No measurement that decision, at the
>bottom, is independent. 'The best-laid plans of mice and men often go
>astray'; and are _inherently_ astray. They are never plans until observed
>- when the secret's out. Code hides and reveals, checksumming a relative
>assurance of purity. Beyond that, there is nothing but plasma analogic,
>and the digital grave. )

The metaphor is always an astray, an excess of the right hemisphere. Code 
reintroduces the right, the metaphor of the digital.



***

Appendix - notes on neurology issues, from Oliver Sacks -

the fact is that the history of neurology is the history of research on
the left hemisphere.

right, the lesser hemisphere. symptoms less clear.
left, more refined, specialized.
on the other hand - the right hemisphere controls the ability to
recognize reality, while the left is developed for programs and
schemata, like a computer hacked on the animal brain.
and neurology was more interested in the programs than reality (or
consciousness). right hemisphere has been a stranger also to science.
Luria then suggests another neurology, of "personalistic" or "romantic"
science - anyway, subjective, phenomenological, while the left etc.

neurological disturbances in the right subverts the classical notion
that a brain damage _whatsoever_ lessens the abstracting and
categorizing ability and leaves the individual to the emotional and
concrete - a notion that comes from only researching the left.

lacks and excess : left and right
in view of the left there are lacks, functions are missing
a productive sickness? the hyper-
a computer model of monster and mania?
luria: the man with a shattered world vs. the mind of a mnemonist
l-dopa
the excesses forces a move from a neurology of functions to one of
activity and life.
the risk of hyper is embedded in growth and nature of life, of
monstrousness, weird, deviating para-states - hyperkinesi tends to
parakinesi, hypergnosi paragnosi.

the paradoxal in a sickness that can appear as fresh - a wonderful
feeling of health and well-being, and only later reveal its bad effects
or workings - is one of nature's chimera and ironies. eg. art and
sickness, dionysian, veneric, faustian - thomas mann
how are you doing? dangerously good!  -george eliot
the tourette patient, -i have too much energy
after treatment -i don't see stuff and things anymore, will everything
be dead when i'm cured?
l-dopa tree drawings dry, shrinked, winter trees without leaves into
lively, arabesque, baroque.
what paradox, cruelty and irony - that the inner life and fantasy lies
passive, unless woken by drugs or sickness.
vigor can be real even if caused by sickness. and this kind of paradoxal
sickness can be of lasting gain. here we are in strange terrain where
the conventional reasoning are inverted - sick is healthy, and the
normal sick.

reminiscense, nostalgic incontinens, memorytracks memorytraces

retards, -if we are to use only one word, it's 'concretion', their world is
lively, intensive, detailed, and still simple, because it's concrete.

if a man loses 'the abstracting-categorizing functioning' (goldstein) or the
'propositional reasoning' (hughlings jackson), what's left is subhuman,
meaningless and uninteresting. that statement is backwards, awkward, since
the concrete is elementary, it's what makes reality 'real', lifelike,
personal and meaningful - all is lost if the concrete is lost.

exploration of the concrete, luria's 'romantic science'.
the concrete is treated as trivial.

term : symbol - paradigmatic : narrative

could we have a weaved mat without a pattern? a pattern without the weave?
like the chesire cat's grin.

the human calculators function iconic. -how could you count the matches so
fast? -we didn't count, we saw 111 - 37, 37, 37.

kurt gödel discussed in general how numbers, especially primes, can act as
'marks' - for thoughts, people, places, whatever.

(Oliver Sacks - The man who mistook his wife for a hat - ISBN 9176087603)

More on neurology, code, phenomenology - http://noemata.net/ideareal/





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