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<DIV>Joel--What you say below sounds right to me. If I understand it
rightly, time is a recursion of boundary-making, an iteration of a
differentiating and aggregating process, a multiplier of the voids spaced
between the nodes of isness, and a grower of the clusters between the voids--as
in your cellular automata model. It makes sense.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>And it fits with the notion that time is the most critical aspect of
perception, an idea that Jeff Hawkins proposes in On Intelligence, one of
the few new-idea-generating books I've read in a long time. Perception
in Hawkin's view is a flow, a music. As in music, we spot thje
sensory world's ur-patterns, its repetitive themes and their
variations. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In higher cortical regions, we create invariant representations of a stream
of sensations, we sift the themes from of a parade of sense-impacts, we
capture the pattern of a surge of impressions that follow each other like
the notes in a melody. Hawkins thinks of these invariant representations
as "Name that Tune"-style song-spotting. We send the prediction that
the name of the tune--the invariant representation-- implies back down to
the sensory level of the cortex. If the song title predicts the
incoming stream properly, everything is fine. If the incoming signal-surge
no longer follows the melody predicted by the song title, more cortical regions
are forced to rush in and try other song titles, other invariant
representations, other names for the possible melody.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>The cosmos is process. Time is as critical to understanding as are
"things". </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Perception has to mirror the cosmos to work. So perception is a
time-process, a temporal-flow-identifier-and-predictor, a future-projector that
works by taking what's past and flipping it forward, sometimes with a new
twist. Music is practice for future-projection, for identifying patterns
in the flow. New musical styles and new songs are practice for the
novelties that may lay around the bend. Howard</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 3/28/2005 11:07:39 A.M. Pacific Standard Time,
isaacsonj@hotmail.com writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" face=Arial color=#000000 size=2>I
actually think more in terms of an Ur-Process that leads to Ur-Patterns.<BR>In
my view, our cognitive apparatus is comprised of zillions of
those<BR>Ur-Processes, interlocked in certain ways. The very
elemental Ur-Process<BR>involves local recursive discrimination of
differences. Repeat: LOCAL
<BR>RECURSIVE<BR>DISCRIMINATION OF DIFFERENCES is a key.
Interlocution of many<BR>Ur-Processes yields global Ur-Patterns that are
pervasive in Nature, at all <BR>scales.<BR>(Biology and genetics are subsumed
under these processes and involve the <BR>same<BR>patterns.)<BR><BR>Such
Ur-Patterns come to our awareness as "snapshots" during the incessant<BR>flow
of the Ur-Processes.<BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
<DIV></DIV></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF"
PTSIZE="10">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer Principle: A
Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution
of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate
Psychology Department, New York University; Core Faculty Member, The Graduate
Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder:
International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution
Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango
Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the
Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political
Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human
Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New
Paradigm book series.<BR>For information on The International Paleopsychology
Project, see: www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer
Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see
www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of
Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see
www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>