C-171. Word’s work and words’ work: the other “information theory”
If we envision life as our progress along the path of Becoming (C-170), then we might also see language protocols as a lifeline of sorts, more or less paralleling our path – our own Expansions -- as a help for us as we make our way, not just find our way (C-93), through life … and not just what we say to ourselves and others (WISA) about what we are talking about (WITA) -- i.e., two major functions of communication: representation and connection.
But what did we, and still do? It all seems so natural – like another “invisible hand” at work ... that the B-transform is the way to Read the Expansion … and that the L-transform should track with it, such that a “thing-word” technology of B- and L-protocols would give us the WISA-WITA functionality we need … a technology of L-protocols that began with names and other such Tell and Read markers (e.g., step-imitative sounds), advanced to a second level protocol of sounds and word(s) and other such symbols, then to a third level protocol of composed sentences and other such symbol systems – propositions, equations, stories, models and other (more or less interpretive and explanatory) accounts re B-B relationships … and side-stepped along the way by ad hoc adjustments to word and sentence (e.g., suffixes and voice) -- on behalf of enhanced identification of particulars.
All this after the fact … after the fact of where our attention has already been focused: on what and how.
The B-transform focuses attention on bodies. On the collisions involving them, happenings to and by them in the Expansion (C-169). Bodies for multi-step entities to remember, for collisions to be avoided or to be arranged. The need for a way to make points AT those bodies when a gesture wouldn’t work for us (see verbal memory)… point AT Tells that are also point FOR Tells for other bodies, especially those like us (a point OF communication).
The language transform (C-156), if more fully realized for step making and taking, would help too in reducing the mind-binding effect of the BPO bias (C-39). Collision-relevant focal attention on bodies and other particular conditions seen “objectively,” along with the hypostasized “universe” and its “laws,” embody that bias.
***
Points help show the line of development for needed L-protocols. They speak to “inform,” an R-word (C-107), a needed functionality (C-144): a matter of Realization (App. XIX; C-111) … needed, given the incomplete instruction attending the human condition (III). Hence the other “information theory.” This information theory is about points not bits, suited for work AT and ON the Frontier (C118), where, before the fact, information must be generated – not just, after the fact, transmitted.
Points AT: Names, but not just names. Imitative sounds, markings, drawings …, labels, pictures … and the need for still more point AT functionality re particular foci of attention: more to point AT, and things difficult to point AT with these simple protocols.
“Me Adam. You Eve” was probably not an early development in human history. But naming to make a point AT probably was. The B-transform, its functionality enhanced by collision’s need for focal attention, both sensOry capacity and sensEry capability, engendered a need for points AT “in the darknesses” of past, present and future.
A name works for communicating within and between behavioral entities (e.g., memory and messaging), in so far as point AT is the only needed functionality. “Instinct + Outstinct = Extinct” (C-167) says it isn’t. We are not programmed for “see => do.” And it works only until there aren’t enough names to handle all the potential foci of attention.
Enter the point(s) ABOUT, which can make a point AT (identify) when nothing else would work as well. Functionally, cognition is now added to focal attention: a relating via a relation of the (focal) thing to another focal thing (e.g., as via attribute[s] or association*). This aids identification, and it also bears on the behavioral problem (I: Pbeh –the point AT’s consequentiality re collision[s], such as approach vs. avoidance by the point AT and/or toward the point AT).
Although we might customarily think of a point ABOUT in terms of more than one word (e.g., noun and adjective or noun and verb), cognition comes into play even for one word’s work. The common noun and the conceptual term illustrate this. They stipulate a set of comprised things, using cognition’s inside-outside (I-O) relation (X), the attribute (e.g., adjective) performing the summary duty.
(The concept, we have seen [C-124], is pretty much a case of the vague re the various. It egregiously corrals particulars of any kind – as seen in the use of “evolution” as a conceptual term for various and variable units of change in body and/or step [C-20]. Word suffixes extend the conceptual term [e.g., “-ion,” “-ism,” “-ment”] to confound and complicate matters.)
Cognition’s functional contribution and inform’s point ABOUT make this the 2nd level L-protocol … and with additional composig via words or other symbols (e.g., sentences, equations) the 3rd. They should also signal the increasing relevance of the R-transform’s foundation to needed functionality … and raise the question of whether our current, familiar languages (so many L-protocols, different across cultures!) afford us an adequate R-sense for the paths we may, might or should make and/or take.
The 2nd and 3rd level L-protocols take us from a symmetric “thing-name” technology to an asymmetric technology. There is thus, by the asymmetry’s implicatory relation, more point(s) to communication and its message (App. XX).
But at a terrible price. As the problem of definition (0:Ps) makes evident when just a word, let alone word combinations, poses a Read and Tell challenge to L-protocol users. We still lack L-protocols (WISA) for all that which needs to be talked about (WITA) with regard to what is called for (WICF: C-110) – especially re needed functionality (C-144).
***
“Words can’t express ….” Paths or parties? Our Expansions Course paths call for Points ABOUT, informational needs relevant to Telling (i.e., composing) and Reading collision paths and not just to identifying collision parties. Paths put a severe strain on B-transform based word technologies. Consider the paths involved for collisions not just between self and other but between others (VI: the on-gap and off-gap behavioral problems [not just questions]). Consider the B-protocol biases if we see ourselves “objectively” and not as Expansions. Consider employing cognition’s I-O cognitive relation re an ahistorical “behavioral entity” (C-114) to the neglect of a more fully realized historical (C-108), before-after B-A relation, as in “all that it takes” (II) – which brings step making, ergo compose behavior, into the picture.
What are we about (C-119: Pioneers)? Not just what about us, useful as that may be. How do we Grasp that which is general (i.e., the Nature of Things’ persisting conditions of the Expansion, of its partial order, consequentiality and discontinuity), the how’s, the steps, and not just the what’s, the bodies, of materiality, the general and not just the universal? Not just the particulars re points ABOUT….
And then there is the matter of point TO, the noun form (noun particle: see App. XX; C-40 – and below). We might just see a point TO as no more than an emphatic point AT – a “point to,” the verb particle form. But that would cover up a growing behavioral problem and a threat to linguistic development and potential source of L- erosion -- and of R-erosion as well (C-125). A point TO is in one sense the response to the question of “Which?” – as in decision making. In another sense it is the response to the question of “Source?” – as in problem solving.
The growing behavioral problem can be seen in the rise of decision making in relation to problem solving (C-98: That other climate change). Decision making deals with available choices – i.e., essentially a point TO matter. Quality of life (0) and its four kinds of unsolved problems argue against depending just on the steps in our current repertoire. The Frontier (C-118) says that we must develop the capability to mind before the fact and not just after the fact. (See “mind” as an R-word, with capability the V-l component of Realization [App. XX] – the intransitive verb before the transitive.) Decision making emphasizes a strategy of ADOPT, Ao, when needed problem-solving functionality desperately calls for attention to ADEPT, Ae.
***
How might we improve our L-protocols? The many “natural languages,” which constitute our secondary Read and Tell technology (C-8), pose many problems (0:Ps) despite their demonstrated utility.…
Problems of word definition (especially for conceptual terms) within cultures;
Problems of translation for communication between cultures;
Problems of representation for neglected and/or poorly viewed behavior (WITA /WISA>1; WICF/WISA>1);
Problems of paradigm bias due to the reliance on the B-transform as a perspective on the Expansion – for human behavior as well as for other behavioral entities.
These problems make apparent needed functionality, the need for new technology, new L-protocols to replace or complement current languages (L-protocols), which are keyed to the B-transform’s protocols.** (The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis seems only half the story here: Cognition using the B-transform base has broadly impacted language formation [object-oriented Tells]; then these languages may affect the cognitive Reads of language particulars. The latter particular effects pale in comparison to the more general B-transform effect. If we reinvent languages, at least in part, based on the R-transform, the Tell-Read success record might improve. B-transform languages serve identification, but – as problem solving reminds us – there is more to needed functionality than that.)
Do we simply coin more words? Do we simply use more words in combination (e.g.. “Love is ___, ___ and ___.” Or: “the ___, ___, ___ dog.” Both of which may serve point AT’s identificatory function. But what of other point function needs?
Or do we invent language: a Tell Involve modality that can assist us to Grasp (C-105)***? So that, for example, “Support helps!” readily makes sense, linguistically as well as behaviorally. Two R-words (C-107), “support” and “help,” each commonly used as either verb or noun, and ambivalent in that respect, are here Grasped by the weak linguistic Involve of noun-verb … plus the related and reinforcing [number] cue of the “s” on “help.” But how much Tell, how much Read is there in “Support helps” with respect to what is being talked about and what is called for?
For another example, see C-40. There noun particles are introduced as companions for verb particles, serving a similar function – indicated as we can now see by R- words having two noun as well as two verb senses (App. XX), in and by which, for example, “point” as noun as well as verb is served by adding, say, “TO” or “AT.” Thereby a kind of point is distinguished from a way of pointing. Verb particles (e.g., the “out” in “sort out,” “find out,” “make out”) also drastically alter the molecular step being talked about.
The many natural languages have emerged via invention, often by many incremental inventions (e.g., prefixes and suffixes to words, declension and conjugation, tense and voice). Reverse engineering via artificial intelligence (C-143) – i.e., accepting the after-the-fact (and its limitations re WITA and WICF), would take us straight back to the limited B-transform perspective on which these inventions were made.
The attempts ventured to produce an amalgam “universal language” offer a different approach, but one that also founders on the limitations of its B- transform foundation and the L-protocols available via that base.
The desire, indeed the need, for cultural (aka community, union) behavioral identity makes a strong argument for retaining the natural languages we have … and which furnish the bulk of elementary education – as much for communal purpose as for instruction (0:Sp).
Perhaps, then, we should approach this core problem in a different way….
How about a general definition instead of a universal language? A universal definition based on WITA (or not talked about but should be) and WICF (which called-for condition may or may not have been Read) instead of the many varieties of WISA (natural languages)? A definition to which each culture may refer, as appropriate, its current word(s). A definition by which each culture may provide word(s) not yet available in their language.
Based on the R-transform (C-111) Read of the Expansion, such a definition is available: R-words (C-107), for conditions of which there are many given representation, for better or worse, in every natural language -- some “undiscovered,” some abused and many underused (App. XX: Message theory).#
R-words pertain to words present or absent in any language that deal with part or all of the behavioral progression of problem solving from needed functionality through capability development and the composing of steps and/or bodies to the desired functionality (App. XIX). The L- and R-transforms can be brought together productively (“<=>”: C-172-3) to help us ... because each respects the historical nature of the Expansion (C-108).
For the Linguistic transform (C-156) and the Realization transform (C-111) to work together (“<=>”), to best serve needed functionality, we must look to improving their respective protocols via technological advance, composing new protocols in view of the work yet to be done (i.e., needed functionality: C-144) in problem solving (0,I) – and in light of what available protocols now offer.
***
We have lamented the impoverished state of R-protocols for mapping our way in problem solving (App. XIX) and the message confusion rampant there (App. XX). Well-specified units of molecular behavior are what we need to optimize functionality – which an R-sense (C-128), R-words (C-107) and R-blocks (App. XXIII) address. But what molecular structure we have instead are globs of step making and/or step taking familiar to us, after the fact, as “acts” and “actions” – suitable, more or less, for an ADOPT behavioral strategy, but unwieldy for the developing the ADEPT capability and compositional strategy, for solving the behavioral problem (I:Pbeh), so urgently needed in view of the Nature of Things’ general persisting conditions of partial order, consequentiality and (entity: aka body) discontinuity (III).
Comfortable, more or less, as we may be with familiar L-protocols (e.g., names, words, labels, terms, notations, sentences, propositions, equations) that we have (more or less) adopted or were made to adopt, there are functional shortcomings here, in the Read and Tell technologies re what we are talking about, for which new technologies might and should be composed.* Thus labels and behavioral terms such as concepts are a nightmare (C-124,173) for the task at hand. A word is asked to do the work that even now we are unprepared to do with more than one word.
What is that Tell work? The L-protocol’s word (s) must first Grasp (C-105) what is being talked about, WITA (the point AT; some thing or thingk [C-27]: the focus of attention – and the focal point of the B-transform). Then that protocol must in turn be Grasped for effective interdependency of the L- and R-transforms if the human condition’s needed functionality (C-144) and Realization are to be served … that Course (C-139) of and for life that is consonant with the Expansion (C-160,163).
This double Grasp requirement for an effective Read <=> Tell linguistic protocol is not the simple ahistorical matter of the relationship between word and thing, mediated or not by the primary Read of WITA and/or the secondary or tertiary Reader of the word(s) (C-8). There’s more to Read and Tell than mere, even mediated, association of word and thing. Both of the two Grasps figure to be weak, more a matter of agreement than understanding (XI), because the respective protocols are weak. Word definition is the tip of the iceberg here (0:Ps), because what we are not yet able to do (0:P) is arguably more important than the trouble we have doing it the way we do.
*Association may employ cognition’s before-after relation, but there is a huge gap between the Grasps afforded by mere sequence and logic’s necessary and sufficient “cause => effect.” A gap replete with our Expansion’s Course particulars of relatings and relations to produce relationships and of generalities (ergo principles of behavior [VI-XI]) that can improve our paths with respect to collisions.
** Language protocols engage the de facto B-transform. They engage cognition (relations of inside-outside, before-after and same-different) together with the B-transform’s focus of attention … to make a point ABOUT. Their aid to making points AT (e.g. via B-attributes), while consequential, pales relative to their reinforcement of the B-transform’s paradigm status.
*** Language invention to produce a stronger Grasp is implicit in Boltzmann’s argument supporting the creation of mathematical models freely – then and only then to be tested for their utility.
# Consider a parallel development for dictionaries to the current practice of initially reporting linguistic roots for words (a point TO). Right then, for R-words, we might add another point TO, re the behavioral root (C-95). An “R,” say. And perhaps an “r” for corrupted R-words such as “composition” … whose “-ion” suffix ambitiously and ambiguously glosses over the process and components of Realization (Ouch! et tu!), failing to provide the needed Involve for the needed Grasp.
(c) 2016 R. F. Carter
But what did we, and still do? It all seems so natural – like another “invisible hand” at work ... that the B-transform is the way to Read the Expansion … and that the L-transform should track with it, such that a “thing-word” technology of B- and L-protocols would give us the WISA-WITA functionality we need … a technology of L-protocols that began with names and other such Tell and Read markers (e.g., step-imitative sounds), advanced to a second level protocol of sounds and word(s) and other such symbols, then to a third level protocol of composed sentences and other such symbol systems – propositions, equations, stories, models and other (more or less interpretive and explanatory) accounts re B-B relationships … and side-stepped along the way by ad hoc adjustments to word and sentence (e.g., suffixes and voice) -- on behalf of enhanced identification of particulars.
All this after the fact … after the fact of where our attention has already been focused: on what and how.
The B-transform focuses attention on bodies. On the collisions involving them, happenings to and by them in the Expansion (C-169). Bodies for multi-step entities to remember, for collisions to be avoided or to be arranged. The need for a way to make points AT those bodies when a gesture wouldn’t work for us (see verbal memory)… point AT Tells that are also point FOR Tells for other bodies, especially those like us (a point OF communication).
The language transform (C-156), if more fully realized for step making and taking, would help too in reducing the mind-binding effect of the BPO bias (C-39). Collision-relevant focal attention on bodies and other particular conditions seen “objectively,” along with the hypostasized “universe” and its “laws,” embody that bias.
Points help show the line of development for needed L-protocols. They speak to “inform,” an R-word (C-107), a needed functionality (C-144): a matter of Realization (App. XIX; C-111) … needed, given the incomplete instruction attending the human condition (III). Hence the other “information theory.” This information theory is about points not bits, suited for work AT and ON the Frontier (C118), where, before the fact, information must be generated – not just, after the fact, transmitted.
Points AT: Names, but not just names. Imitative sounds, markings, drawings …, labels, pictures … and the need for still more point AT functionality re particular foci of attention: more to point AT, and things difficult to point AT with these simple protocols.
“Me Adam. You Eve” was probably not an early development in human history. But naming to make a point AT probably was. The B-transform, its functionality enhanced by collision’s need for focal attention, both sensOry capacity and sensEry capability, engendered a need for points AT “in the darknesses” of past, present and future.
A name works for communicating within and between behavioral entities (e.g., memory and messaging), in so far as point AT is the only needed functionality. “Instinct + Outstinct = Extinct” (C-167) says it isn’t. We are not programmed for “see => do.” And it works only until there aren’t enough names to handle all the potential foci of attention.
Enter the point(s) ABOUT, which can make a point AT (identify) when nothing else would work as well. Functionally, cognition is now added to focal attention: a relating via a relation of the (focal) thing to another focal thing (e.g., as via attribute[s] or association*). This aids identification, and it also bears on the behavioral problem (I: Pbeh –the point AT’s consequentiality re collision[s], such as approach vs. avoidance by the point AT and/or toward the point AT).
Although we might customarily think of a point ABOUT in terms of more than one word (e.g., noun and adjective or noun and verb), cognition comes into play even for one word’s work. The common noun and the conceptual term illustrate this. They stipulate a set of comprised things, using cognition’s inside-outside (I-O) relation (X), the attribute (e.g., adjective) performing the summary duty.
(The concept, we have seen [C-124], is pretty much a case of the vague re the various. It egregiously corrals particulars of any kind – as seen in the use of “evolution” as a conceptual term for various and variable units of change in body and/or step [C-20]. Word suffixes extend the conceptual term [e.g., “-ion,” “-ism,” “-ment”] to confound and complicate matters.)
Cognition’s functional contribution and inform’s point ABOUT make this the 2nd level L-protocol … and with additional composig via words or other symbols (e.g., sentences, equations) the 3rd. They should also signal the increasing relevance of the R-transform’s foundation to needed functionality … and raise the question of whether our current, familiar languages (so many L-protocols, different across cultures!) afford us an adequate R-sense for the paths we may, might or should make and/or take.
The 2nd and 3rd level L-protocols take us from a symmetric “thing-name” technology to an asymmetric technology. There is thus, by the asymmetry’s implicatory relation, more point(s) to communication and its message (App. XX).
But at a terrible price. As the problem of definition (0:Ps) makes evident when just a word, let alone word combinations, poses a Read and Tell challenge to L-protocol users. We still lack L-protocols (WISA) for all that which needs to be talked about (WITA) with regard to what is called for (WICF: C-110) – especially re needed functionality (C-144).
“Words can’t express ….” Paths or parties? Our Expansions Course paths call for Points ABOUT, informational needs relevant to Telling (i.e., composing) and Reading collision paths and not just to identifying collision parties. Paths put a severe strain on B-transform based word technologies. Consider the paths involved for collisions not just between self and other but between others (VI: the on-gap and off-gap behavioral problems [not just questions]). Consider the B-protocol biases if we see ourselves “objectively” and not as Expansions. Consider employing cognition’s I-O cognitive relation re an ahistorical “behavioral entity” (C-114) to the neglect of a more fully realized historical (C-108), before-after B-A relation, as in “all that it takes” (II) – which brings step making, ergo compose behavior, into the picture.
What are we about (C-119: Pioneers)? Not just what about us, useful as that may be. How do we Grasp that which is general (i.e., the Nature of Things’ persisting conditions of the Expansion, of its partial order, consequentiality and discontinuity), the how’s, the steps, and not just the what’s, the bodies, of materiality, the general and not just the universal? Not just the particulars re points ABOUT….
And then there is the matter of point TO, the noun form (noun particle: see App. XX; C-40 – and below). We might just see a point TO as no more than an emphatic point AT – a “point to,” the verb particle form. But that would cover up a growing behavioral problem and a threat to linguistic development and potential source of L- erosion -- and of R-erosion as well (C-125). A point TO is in one sense the response to the question of “Which?” – as in decision making. In another sense it is the response to the question of “Source?” – as in problem solving.
The growing behavioral problem can be seen in the rise of decision making in relation to problem solving (C-98: That other climate change). Decision making deals with available choices – i.e., essentially a point TO matter. Quality of life (0) and its four kinds of unsolved problems argue against depending just on the steps in our current repertoire. The Frontier (C-118) says that we must develop the capability to mind before the fact and not just after the fact. (See “mind” as an R-word, with capability the V-l component of Realization [App. XX] – the intransitive verb before the transitive.) Decision making emphasizes a strategy of ADOPT, Ao, when needed problem-solving functionality desperately calls for attention to ADEPT, Ae.
How might we improve our L-protocols? The many “natural languages,” which constitute our secondary Read and Tell technology (C-8), pose many problems (0:Ps) despite their demonstrated utility.…
Problems of word definition (especially for conceptual terms) within cultures;
Problems of translation for communication between cultures;
Problems of representation for neglected and/or poorly viewed behavior (WITA /WISA>1; WICF/WISA>1);
Problems of paradigm bias due to the reliance on the B-transform as a perspective on the Expansion – for human behavior as well as for other behavioral entities.
These problems make apparent needed functionality, the need for new technology, new L-protocols to replace or complement current languages (L-protocols), which are keyed to the B-transform’s protocols.** (The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis seems only half the story here: Cognition using the B-transform base has broadly impacted language formation [object-oriented Tells]; then these languages may affect the cognitive Reads of language particulars. The latter particular effects pale in comparison to the more general B-transform effect. If we reinvent languages, at least in part, based on the R-transform, the Tell-Read success record might improve. B-transform languages serve identification, but – as problem solving reminds us – there is more to needed functionality than that.)
Do we simply coin more words? Do we simply use more words in combination (e.g.. “Love is ___, ___ and ___.” Or: “the ___, ___, ___ dog.” Both of which may serve point AT’s identificatory function. But what of other point function needs?
Or do we invent language: a Tell Involve modality that can assist us to Grasp (C-105)***? So that, for example, “Support helps!” readily makes sense, linguistically as well as behaviorally. Two R-words (C-107), “support” and “help,” each commonly used as either verb or noun, and ambivalent in that respect, are here Grasped by the weak linguistic Involve of noun-verb … plus the related and reinforcing [number] cue of the “s” on “help.” But how much Tell, how much Read is there in “Support helps” with respect to what is being talked about and what is called for?
For another example, see C-40. There noun particles are introduced as companions for verb particles, serving a similar function – indicated as we can now see by R- words having two noun as well as two verb senses (App. XX), in and by which, for example, “point” as noun as well as verb is served by adding, say, “TO” or “AT.” Thereby a kind of point is distinguished from a way of pointing. Verb particles (e.g., the “out” in “sort out,” “find out,” “make out”) also drastically alter the molecular step being talked about.
The many natural languages have emerged via invention, often by many incremental inventions (e.g., prefixes and suffixes to words, declension and conjugation, tense and voice). Reverse engineering via artificial intelligence (C-143) – i.e., accepting the after-the-fact (and its limitations re WITA and WICF), would take us straight back to the limited B-transform perspective on which these inventions were made.
The attempts ventured to produce an amalgam “universal language” offer a different approach, but one that also founders on the limitations of its B- transform foundation and the L-protocols available via that base.
The desire, indeed the need, for cultural (aka community, union) behavioral identity makes a strong argument for retaining the natural languages we have … and which furnish the bulk of elementary education – as much for communal purpose as for instruction (0:Sp).
Perhaps, then, we should approach this core problem in a different way….
How about a general definition instead of a universal language? A universal definition based on WITA (or not talked about but should be) and WICF (which called-for condition may or may not have been Read) instead of the many varieties of WISA (natural languages)? A definition to which each culture may refer, as appropriate, its current word(s). A definition by which each culture may provide word(s) not yet available in their language.
Based on the R-transform (C-111) Read of the Expansion, such a definition is available: R-words (C-107), for conditions of which there are many given representation, for better or worse, in every natural language -- some “undiscovered,” some abused and many underused (App. XX: Message theory).#
R-words pertain to words present or absent in any language that deal with part or all of the behavioral progression of problem solving from needed functionality through capability development and the composing of steps and/or bodies to the desired functionality (App. XIX). The L- and R-transforms can be brought together productively (“<=>”: C-172-3) to help us ... because each respects the historical nature of the Expansion (C-108).
For the Linguistic transform (C-156) and the Realization transform (C-111) to work together (“<=>”), to best serve needed functionality, we must look to improving their respective protocols via technological advance, composing new protocols in view of the work yet to be done (i.e., needed functionality: C-144) in problem solving (0,I) – and in light of what available protocols now offer.
We have lamented the impoverished state of R-protocols for mapping our way in problem solving (App. XIX) and the message confusion rampant there (App. XX). Well-specified units of molecular behavior are what we need to optimize functionality – which an R-sense (C-128), R-words (C-107) and R-blocks (App. XXIII) address. But what molecular structure we have instead are globs of step making and/or step taking familiar to us, after the fact, as “acts” and “actions” – suitable, more or less, for an ADOPT behavioral strategy, but unwieldy for the developing the ADEPT capability and compositional strategy, for solving the behavioral problem (I:Pbeh), so urgently needed in view of the Nature of Things’ general persisting conditions of partial order, consequentiality and (entity: aka body) discontinuity (III).
Comfortable, more or less, as we may be with familiar L-protocols (e.g., names, words, labels, terms, notations, sentences, propositions, equations) that we have (more or less) adopted or were made to adopt, there are functional shortcomings here, in the Read and Tell technologies re what we are talking about, for which new technologies might and should be composed.* Thus labels and behavioral terms such as concepts are a nightmare (C-124,173) for the task at hand. A word is asked to do the work that even now we are unprepared to do with more than one word.
What is that Tell work? The L-protocol’s word (s) must first Grasp (C-105) what is being talked about, WITA (the point AT; some thing or thingk [C-27]: the focus of attention – and the focal point of the B-transform). Then that protocol must in turn be Grasped for effective interdependency of the L- and R-transforms if the human condition’s needed functionality (C-144) and Realization are to be served … that Course (C-139) of and for life that is consonant with the Expansion (C-160,163).
This double Grasp requirement for an effective Read <=> Tell linguistic protocol is not the simple ahistorical matter of the relationship between word and thing, mediated or not by the primary Read of WITA and/or the secondary or tertiary Reader of the word(s) (C-8). There’s more to Read and Tell than mere, even mediated, association of word and thing. Both of the two Grasps figure to be weak, more a matter of agreement than understanding (XI), because the respective protocols are weak. Word definition is the tip of the iceberg here (0:Ps), because what we are not yet able to do (0:P) is arguably more important than the trouble we have doing it the way we do.
*Association may employ cognition’s before-after relation, but there is a huge gap between the Grasps afforded by mere sequence and logic’s necessary and sufficient “cause => effect.” A gap replete with our Expansion’s Course particulars of relatings and relations to produce relationships and of generalities (ergo principles of behavior [VI-XI]) that can improve our paths with respect to collisions.
** Language protocols engage the de facto B-transform. They engage cognition (relations of inside-outside, before-after and same-different) together with the B-transform’s focus of attention … to make a point ABOUT. Their aid to making points AT (e.g. via B-attributes), while consequential, pales relative to their reinforcement of the B-transform’s paradigm status.
*** Language invention to produce a stronger Grasp is implicit in Boltzmann’s argument supporting the creation of mathematical models freely – then and only then to be tested for their utility.
# Consider a parallel development for dictionaries to the current practice of initially reporting linguistic roots for words (a point TO). Right then, for R-words, we might add another point TO, re the behavioral root (C-95). An “R,” say. And perhaps an “r” for corrupted R-words such as “composition” … whose “-ion” suffix ambitiously and ambiguously glosses over the process and components of Realization (Ouch! et tu!), failing to provide the needed Involve for the needed Grasp.
(c) 2016 R. F. Carter
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