White Paper – DRAFT  in the context of the presenation for the Alexander von Humboldt/Riter Institute for Internet and Society Oct/Nov. 2011

 

Which Languages, Expressions, and Mindsets

for Democracy and Capacity Building?

How can we express ourselves and share perceptions and assumptions more meaningful and “contagious” in view of Global Grand Challenges? (see also)

 

I had a friend (Mark Davidson) who was one of the early system scientists, did his PhD by Beralanffy and called himself the Wordwatcher, being in Media and Publications in California in America and the World. The question if words are enough he would have laughed. He would add all expressions and presentations, feelings and schemas.

But what we experience today is that the more the people have lsotn orientation, the more they are stuck and lost into the sharpest last and final definition, and anyone not buying into this final meening is “out”. Good to know – But I also call it Sectarianism. If you are part of this league, turf or culture, you are “in” – if not too bad…

We know that the meaning of words change have changed in history and cultures, they even mean different things in different cultures, Kultur in German needs to be often translated as Civilization, and Zivilisation is for the English speaking world Culture. Fascinating or frightening, isn’t it? We think we know – but do not.

 

With Colleagues around a Global Agora, Peace and Deliberation with the help of Structured Dialogic Design we had recently tons of E-mails about Words and/or Images, how to express yourself if you are stuck in one mode. These deliberation people to not judge or insult statements or originations, they have people explain what they mean when they say something. And so the relations and situations framing words and meanings are shared, the group explores meanings in contexts, and so can even explore the meaning for a person of a picture of an incident and by not judging, but relating what “drives” and connects issues and situations. I have experienced that minority statements were adopted by the whole group this is really miraculous…

 

But coming back to words and images: They are like schools who seldom talk to each other. Words and Images invoke very different frames in different hemispheres of the brain. George Lakoff points out that words ignite/call different frames, and the different ”schools” share their meaning as we know in election campaigns where you are advised to not call certain value-frames as these rough categories taint the meaning, you see a white elephant – specially when asked to not call the image of a white elephant….

 

This dilemma of the different schools and value frames is tragic, people event think in dualisms. Think that all is right-left, black-white, good-bad, …  but this is not so, it is “in-between” and needs be explored.

 

These schools or camps fight, they are like the old vs. new caught in a stalement or dilemma. How to get out of it? There is much talk about multi-modal these days. It is like with the senses in your body. They make together a whole and if your visual is contradicting your gravitational or sensual perceptions you are dizzy or event get nausea, feeling for example “queasy” or "wamble”.

 

How to get beyond dichotomies, not only in the field of bodily sensations!?

Berhard Baars spoke in personal communications to me and publications about “workspaces of the mind”[1], we humans are model-making “animals” and can go beyond and in-between, even take on ex-centric positionalities, (Hellmut Plessner, Philosophical Anthropology) – why don’t we try and instead label everything, putting it in boxes like soft vs. hard, male vs. female ? Other cultures do not have the “sexes” in their language and life very good and since long with it. Why not give it a try? Consider shared situation-rooms or peace-rooms of the Mind, just for helping to cope, roughly, outlines for orientation, not for the nitty-gritty details. Einstein spoke about the need zum “zurechtfinden”, not to know the details, but to cope, selfstarting, maybe even entrepreneurially, not know roughly and have enough orientation know directions, ways and means…. For this a big picture is needed. Needless to say are many broader frames possible and they could compete and need to be combined to have a better fit and more practicability and so better use.

 

I came long ago in the schools of pragmatics across the trivalent and multivalent logic and poly-contextuality of Gotthard Günther and also going down to the beginnings of Pragmatics[2], to Charles Sander Peirce. 

 

So lets start very basic. Why not combine the three kinds of signs Peirce outlined?, even add a forth level, the action when following Abby Warburg!?   See Illustration: Cusanus, Peirce, Warburg and this page on models.

 

For Lakoff a metaphor is an “image schema”. What is that? Images in array and sequence? How about following Baars model-making “workplaces of the mind” and give images a place in frames or grids. How about taking words into such “orders”, maybe even into the same schemas? How not link the representations, check their neighbourhood, overlap, distance,… ?

Peirce was a polymath, but he also was a surveyor, making maps. Maps are schema which can be to scale, might have for explanations a “legend”, even allow fidelity, matching, truthing and repeatability. But we are not here to “sell” flat maps (2D) or “deep” models (3D) in this case, so they are possibly embodied, tangible and visual).

So I interpret Peirce’s  “Index” as the third kind of signs, additional to symbol and icon, as a pointer, consider it a finger pointing or outlining in a frame, so you only need to agree on the frame ! There is much written about global embodied covenants, but this needs to be revisited later, here consider the frame virtual or imagined, only practical and meaningful, serving a shared purpose ! A location and frame has to be considered immaterial, just imagine geographic longitudes and latitudes, you will never bang your head when crossing the date-line in Greenwich, or you can not move a coordinate, you can move boundaries, but never the grid as it is immaterial and exists only as agreement!!  This is hard to get by some, but surveyors learn it the hard way. They are asked on the first day of their vocational training to bring a large wooden cross “like Jesus”, up to the top floor or roof-top. An immense hard labour! On arrival for example in the Penthouse, they were in the past with hilarious laughter, everybody drinking and joking on this fool having to learn this as the basis of the profession of making. I fortunately did not fall into the trap to ridicule myself, but every surveyor has learned this basic difference or material and virtual the easy or hard way.

 

So what we are talking here about are SuperSigns and SuperStructures.

 

SuperSigns: A map, but also the Chinese Writing are more of the same concept, but definitely of different quality. They give a place to objects/signs and allow invite abstraction and coding and so also transformation. No wonder Chinese Scholars reflect differently than Western or Orthodox Scholars and Pupils.,.  [more]

 

A grid is such a Tableau or Rhizome or Map – thematical or schematical, to scale or not, but in any case serving the purpose of shared communication – see communion!!

 

SuperStructures:  The author was confronted with the challenge to bridge subjects, sectors, and scales in the early 1990 when the GLOBAL CHANGE exhibition was created on behalf of the German Chancellery by the leading German Science institutions. In that process also the term GLocal was coined by the scientific director and head of the German National Global Change Secretariat.  [link WIKIPEDIA-"Glocal"] The Challenge was to communicate and display change on different time platforms (episodic/epochal), in different sectors and terminologies/languages, and with different granularity or detail, consider it as scale-platforms, micro-meso-macro cosmos, or local-regional-global. (here the term “glocal” came up by Dr. Manfred Lange) when I was fist drafting later building this “cube” , and embodied (real) but imaginary extensional and immersive space build as an exponat for the exhibition (called Rubics Cube of Ecology or Blackbox/Whitebox Nature[3]).

 

This 3-dimensional virtual grid references space is an order space to help point at and relate issues and topics.

Maybe see “pointers to possibilities”  – Survey /Overview or “rough knowledge“. See Knowmap article: Spacial versus Spatial and the Encyclopaedia of Systems and Cybernetics were I present this in short articles and how it came about..

 

A Superstructure combining SuperSigns as a Cognitive Panorama

But a Superstructure is more, see ICSU CODATA MIST 2005 - it is a again a combination of objects, here of spaces geographic spaces (xyz) context spaces (the cube disciplines, magnitudes, time scales), and switching systems knowledge repository ordering spaces which link terms in different subject-languages  and national languages. See also recent article and keywords: Alexander von HUMBOLDT  and Carl RITTER and the work of Ingetraut Dahlberg as “honored” at the FID 1996.

 

This combination of 3 Spaces or 3 times 3D referencing/pointing adding is an artificial construct, it is absolutely arbitrary and the final test can only be, is it useful? First answer is: This Cognitive Panorama is no Panacea – but good to address the issues raised for example by Elinor Ostrom with her recent Nobel Prize in Economics. It is also usable ONLY for rough knowledge or overview orientation. I can not help here with linking to details, as there is a need to distances oneself in order to be able to see from a far distance in order to be able to online and contextualize arbitrarily but often pragmatically useful for certain endeavours…

Helmuth Plessner spoke of th human capability to cultivate the human ability to develop an eccentricity as an ex-centric positionality. To see from another position, maybe with the eyes of the neighbour, or with the birds eye. Please see “Eyes” and “Models” here: Positions and Identities in Global Contexts: Awareness of Self and Others with  me, you, we, they and "others" models (UNESCO- Club of Budapest 1997).

What is done here? We revisit Humanities Global Solution Spaces in view of expanding Problem Spaces across scales in the last 100 or moreso 50 or 20 years !! See these Interviews with Alexander Christakis about the GLOBAL Problematique the last 40 years. It is in no way aceptable given the increase of challenges and impacts we create to get stuck into our linear, monologic, dualistic and flat mind-sets and ways to conceptualize and present/communicate.  To come at least a little closer to the problematique it is therefore proposed to expand our realms of extensionality in order to concretely outline and connect issues across scales. Maybe see these terms in the International Encyclopaedia of Systems and Cybernetics and these to websites: 9-D and Flatwords / Deepworlds.

                                                                                                                                  

 

 

We need to come now back to languaging. How can we express and deliberate, point at the referents also in extended Problem – Solution Spaces and come to an Attention Ecology and Ecudomy ! I feel here it would be wise ton pause and check these articles:

 

 

This done we need to get back to deliberation and peace-making approaches. It is first needed to listen and be attentive, compassionate, subsuming and resonating. Later we need to be able to expand the reference realms in order to make concrete also subject on other levels and scales and in different times. See Concretion in Integral Worlds – as it is easy to get lost in guruesque metaphysics instead of revisiting our shared frames of references and expanding our expressions, presentations and compassion.

 

This said we can explore further the Art DIALOG and DELIBERATION and ENCOUNTERS  in a scientific and authentic way as outlines by Christakis and others, maybe adding a further axiom, the need for the requisite context or situational framing.  It’s a long way towards Harnessing the Collective Wisdom of the People …. And designing AGORAS for the Global Village – but why not giving it a try? ….

 

We need to find ways to come to Informed, Compassionate, Collective, Responsible and Concerned Decision and Policy Making. A long way – I propose to check these Video Clips Freedom of Expression - Speakers Corner http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzx5wXvAjbc - Video TALK-COMMUNICATION formats: http://vimeo.com/15945332 and this site about the new Institute for Internet and Society, and maybe come back later …

 


[1] See:  Creating, Blending, Concerting, and Sharing - Global Workspaces of the Mind, Sign and Symbol Grounding in the Cognitive Panorama (3Space/Time), DAVID BOHM Dialogues & Ljubljana Science Festival, Ljubljana Dialogues, tribute to David Bohm: Quantum physics, Information and Consciousness, October 1998, http://benking.de/dialog/r-benking.html

[2] See for more  Herbert Stachowiak, Systematic Neo-Pragmatism, Meiner, 5 Volumes, http://quergeist.net/Stachowiak/ more in the Berlin StateLibrary,  Monographs-Handschriftensammlung since 2009, Google-Books

[3] See Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics, terms relating to cognitive panorama, cognitive spases, …