Exchange #2. New Dialogue on F.E.D. Dialectics.

Dear Reader,



The transcript of "Exchange #2" in a new, 'multi-exchange' dialogue on F.E.D. Dialectics, has recently been posted to the www.dialectics.info website, as a new entry within Aoristos's Blog.


I have also posted the -- very rich and thorough! -- question that opens this second exchange here, below, for your convenience.



Regards,

Miguel Detonacciones,
Member, F.E.D.,
Officer, F.E.D. Office of Public Liaison

Exchange #2:  Dialogue on F.E.D. Dialectics.  29MAY2015.

I1 Q #2:

 

I think the first response many people would have to this interesting string of ideas, is disbelief.  It seems reasonable that humanity is poised on a precipice, and that both development into a more unified global culture or a fall into chaos or even oblivion are definite possibilities.  But the comparison with the kind of mathematical precision possessed by the fictional foundation in Asimov's novels would seem to be a stretch, based on what we know of in contemporary science.  

 

Concordantly, when many people hear Marx used in this predictive context, there is also a rather strong reaction coming from popular generalizations about his failure to properly understand the complexity of the historical process, and perhaps his inability to accurately foresee his own effect on the very revolutionary process he was predicting.  Even for many people not averse to Marx or Marxist analysis, it is common to say he was a good diagnostician but not a great prognostician.

So how is it your method and prognostications are able to be more accurate and certain, not only more than Marx, but more than what is perceived to be possible in the social sciences of our day?  Or do I misunderstand you?  Is precise prediction and intervention with a mind to push us to a more favorable probable future more of a metaphor, where the emphasis is really on transformation to a more qualitatively different possible future, and therefore not literally a matter of exact predictive science?

 

Is qualitative transformation, what has been historically associated with ontological concepts of emergence and mathematical concepts of non-linearity, capable of being modeled more explicitly, more predictively than the general and often retroductive modelling of emergence in contemporary science? Or is this attempt at quantitative precision in qualitative modelling exactly what you were critiquing in your hyper-link definition of evolution, as opposed to a more symbolic, heterogeneous rendering you called meta-evolution?  In short, is your modelling of non-linearity and meta-evolution just another qualitative description in the language of formal symbolism, or is there some novel scientific content to your modelling?

 

It was suggested that you have developed or are developing new mathematical and logical tools to overcome barriers to this higher future.  You identified the non-linear barrier as one important form of the main impasse preventing our higher fate.  You suggested non-linearity was the mathematical form of what is also an affective and conceptual barrier, relating it to dialectics.  Your hyperlink for dialectics described it in terms of algebra and arithmetic that were very technical and specific, using graphic symbols that are unfamiliar.  Yet you obviously have a broader understanding of the dialectic that you link with the Western philosophical tradition.  Can you describe more simply your understanding of dialectic, and if you must define it against Boolean logic, please explain what that is and why this distinction is important.

 

I think many people would agree and can understand why cultural transformation is important in this crucial time period.  And certainly our affective as well as conceptual development are important to any cultural change.  But why is mathematics so important?  And since non-linearity in science and mathematics has been around for a long time now, how is your approach different?  Why do you see non-linearity as a problem of dialectics and why do you see dialectical logic as offering a way beyond not just scientific and conceptual barriers to progress, but emotional/affective barriers as well?  Is this is a spiritual path to you?  Not necessarily understood as non-material or transcendental, but as a path of personal ontological transformation, a change of one's being?