Skip to main content

representations of hierarchical relations between powers

Aristotle talked about higher powers appropriating or encompassing the operations of lower powers in a manner analogous to the way in which a five-sided figure contains the makings of a four-sided figure--and more besides.  Well, that's a kind of model/game of life in which the higher and lower levels of operation are (albeit inadequately) represented.  But maybe there's a way of representing the Aristotlelian understanding of the hierarchy of powers.  Maybe that way is a kind of multidimensional representation, such that a line is seen as belonging to a plane, which in turn is seen as belonging to a solid, which itself is seen as being more than just the sum of many such planes.  The higher is in a sense  greater than the lower in this sort of analogy.  Is that an insight, or is that an example of "Analogies Gone Wild"?  Maybe there's some other way to convey, somewhat visually, the way powers are interrelated in a hylomorphic understanding of life forms.

Hmmmmmmmmmn...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dembski's "specified compexity" semiotics and teleology (both ad intra and ad extra)

Integral to Dembski's idea of specified complexity (SC) is the notion that something extrinsic to evolution is the source of the specification in how it develops. He compares SC to the message sent by space aliens in the movie "Contact." In that movie, earthbound scientists determine that radio waves originating in from somewhere in our galaxy are actually a signal being sent by space aliens. The scientists determine that these waves are a signal is the fact that they indicate prime numbers in a way that a random occurrence would not. What is interesting to me is the fact that Dembski relies upon an analogy with a sign rather than a machine. Like a machine, signs are produced by an intelligent being for the sake of something beyond themselves. Machines, if you will, have a meaning. Signs, if you will, produce knowledge. But the meaning/knowledge is in both cases something other than the machine/sign itself. Both signs and machines are purposeful or teleological...
Post a Comment
Read more

particular/universal event/rule

While listening to a recorded lecture on Quine's Two Dogmas of Empiricism, it occurred to me that every rule is in a way, a fact about the world. Think about baseball: from the p.o.v. of an individual player, a baseball rule is not a thing but a guide for acting and interpreting the actions of others.  But this rule, like the action it guides, is part of a concrete individual --i.e., part of an institution that has come into existence at a particular place and time, has endured and  may eventually go out of existence.  The baseball rule, as a feature of that individual, is likewise individual.  The term "baseball rule," on the one hand, links us to a unique cultural event; it can, on the other hand, name a certain type of being.  In this way, it transgresses the boundary between proper and common noun. If there were no such overlap, then we might be tempted to divide our ontology between a bunch of facts "out there" and a bunch of common nouns "in here....
Post a Comment
Read more