Dear Organlearners,
Steve Eskow" <dreskow@magicnet.net> writes:
> It seems to me that your commentary on my words contradict your own
> teachings:help me to see what I am missing.
>
> You seem ,first, to use 100 per cent terms when fuzziness and
> indeterminancy is called for, and you announce a position you now hold
> which you will never change, which seems to end the possibility of
> learning.
Steve, I am not alone in seeming to contradict myself. Those who express
their convictions about fuzzy logic, do it in terms of sharp (categorical)
logic and not fyzzy logic!
> Here are your statements which seem to create these puzzles:
>
> >Obviously, since I used the word BELIEVE above, Steve's
> >> If he continues to believe it, he is not learning!
> >also seems to apply to me because I have been believing in the
> >truth of these seven essentialities of creativity since I discovered
> >them and will continue to do so. In the mean time I will keep on
> >questioning them, trying to find a better way to express them.<
>
> Are you saying here that it is impossible that you will find an eighth
> essentiality, or reduce them to five, or decide that you have been in
> error in attempting to codify creativity in this manner? Is this an
> announcement that you have reached a position of permanence, and if so, is
> this not an announcement that learning will not take place, but only
> better forms of expressing what you now believe?
No. It is possible for me to fragment them into more than seven
essentialities. It is also possible for me to group them into less than
seven essentialities. All these possibilities are real. I have disovered
these seven essentialities by hunting for corresponding patterns between
mathematics as an exemplar of abstract creativity and chemsitry as an
exemplar of material creativity. They reflect the position of mathematics
and chemistry after many centuries of research in both. They are permanent
in terms of the past, but definitely not in terms of the future.
> >I wonder what Steve's definition of learning is. From his
> >> If he continues to believe it, he is not learning!
> >I am inclined to infer the following:
> > learning entails the termination of beliefs.
> >I cannot ever agree to such a definition.
>
> If "termination"is not 100% but is fuzzy, that I suppose that you and I
> both will agree that in the fuzzy sense learning does involve a kind of
> termination of belief and/or status. I "terminate" my atheism, and learn
> to believe in God-or vice versa. In the fuzzy sense ,then, learning often
> (always?) involves a change of state, a movement from one state of knowing
> to a new state, and thus a fuzzy termination of the earlier state.
>
> Now, At, you may not agree to such a definition at this moment. But how
> can you be sure you will "never" agree to a kind of fuzzy termination of
> what you now believe and embrace a new state of At?
My experiences are real and sharp. However, their relationship to each
other, are fuzzy. As my experiences grow, some of these relationships get
sharper while others gets more fuzzy. Some relationships have become
completely sharp. It is especially they which help me to understand the
fussy relationships. On the other hand, some fuzzy relationships have
helped me not to rely completely on sharp ones - to keep an open mind on
what appears to be fixed.
> We move on, terminating our arrivals, setting off again, fuzzily and
> endlessly.
Steve, this is very true. But we also need what is sharp to set our sights
and drive us forward. We seem to dintify soemthinh through the mist, and
when we arrive there, we find that it is different to what we expected.
But, in order to get there, we need something more than merely the mist to
set our eyes upon.
Best wishes
--At de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre for Education University of Pretoria Pretoria, South Africa email: amdelange@gold.up.ac.za
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