[FRIAM] Mysticism: still effing the ineffable?

Fri Jun 27 17:12:15 EDT 2025

IDK

> On Jun 28, 2025, at 5:46, steve smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 6/27/25 12:11 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>> 
>> Do you people use acronyms to appear more esoteric?  Stop it!
> Legend:
> FWIW == For What it is Worth
> 
> QWAN == Christopher Alexander's Quality Without a Name
> 
> EAC == Enactivism / Autopoiesis / Dependent Co-Arising (in bottom-posted definitions)
> 
> LLM == Large Language Model
> 
> M&V == Maturana & Varela (in reference to their Autopoesis)
> 
> DaveW == David West
> 
> EricS == David Eric Smith
> 
> hope I got them all
> 
> 
> 
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, 
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>> 
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>> 
>> On Fri, Jun 27, 2025, 10:06 AM steve smith <sasmyth at swcp.com <mailto:sasmyth at swcp.com>> wrote:
>>> FWIW I composed one of my arbitrarily long (and convoluted) observations (maybe just mansplaining) about the multiple uses of the term Reality and how I apprehend them and how I (think) they relate to the business of "chatting with LLMs" and the implications for the discussion at-hand.    Maybe there will (co)arise a white paper elsewhere.
>>> 
>>> However, to (try to) be concise I trimmed it a bit.   I think I hear us talking (effing) all the way around the question of whether there is an ineffable and is it just "mysticism" by another name? 
>>> 
>>> I hear DaveW holding Qualia as the only truly grounded Reality and EricS alluding to the way the Intersubjective dribbles over into Placeholder (a handwaving name for something we all think we know, but can't seem to pin down or agree on).  Most of us trained and operating in Sci/Eng/Tech *want* there to be a simple Objective which the formalisms of math/science help us converge upon but defer to Operational/Pragmatic most of the time?
>>> 
>>> My suspicion of mystical rhetoric is that it is a most obscurational form of Placeholder Reality... while also being *aspriational* ("but what IF there IS an objective reality which *only I* can access through unspecified occult means?").  That said, I DO agree with DaveWs suggestion that there are things which can be perceived, even apprehended which cannot be expressed ("effed").  thus they are "ineffable".  The arts of the Arcane and Occult attempt to "eff" them, though gesturally, pointing vaguely toward an interstice?   Alexander's QWAN, etc.
>>> 
>>> My working definitions of "Reality" to be found at the bottom of the post.
>>> 
>>> I acknowledge Qualia as fundamental to *my* existence..  but recognize the  Pragmatic as a common mode of my expression and even apprehension, all the while aspiring to Objective but deferring heavily to Intersubjective to interpret all of the others.     EAC is most interesting to me whether it is the autopoesis of M&V or the vedic/buddhist dependent co-arising, or wheeler/beyond quantum realities.   But maybe because it is more exotic?
>>> 
>>> EricS wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> On Jun 27, 2025, at 7:31, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com> <mailto:marcus at snoutfarm.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> Dave writes:
>>>>> 
>>>>> < My 'mysticism', like my hallucinogenic experience, is nothing more than a source of what I consider to be "real" data and a supply of fascinating questions—never answers. >
>>>>> 
>>>>> Not clear why something that supposedly cannot be captured by mere language keeps getting pitched as a real and intersubjective thing via language.
>>>> 
>>>> I am much less bothered by this _in principle_, since I generally hold the two premises:
>>>> 
>>>> 1. Language is a collection of signals _within_ a system,
>>> ...
>>>> 
>>>> 2. The term “reality” is a problem in general.
>>>> I do like the idea that this is just a version of the normal confusion, for things not understood very well (like, quite badly), and that one could find ways to do better.
>>> 
>>> Without belaboring (but including for completeness) I offer my working definitions of various uses of the term Reality:
>>> 
>>> 1) Operational Pragmatic Reality:
>>> 
>>> That which affords coherent behavior—the reliable background against which action can occur.  As from ecological psychology (Gibson’s affordances), predictive processing (Friston), and some aspects of (our beloved) Peircean pragmatism?
>>> 
>>> 2) Intersubjective Reality:
>>> 
>>> That which is constructed, maintained, and enacted through language and shared narratives.  As from Luckman, Lacan, Foucault?
>>> 
>>> 3) Formal (Scientific) Reality:
>>> 
>>> That which can be modeled with precision, prediction, and repeatability.  As from Mathematics, physics, systems theory?
>>> 
>>> 4) Experiential Reality:
>>> 
>>> The immediately given, lived experience—the “suchness” before concept.  As from Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Varela?  Whence Qualia.
>>> 
>>> 5) Placeholder Reality:
>>> 
>>> The term “reality” as a placeholder or dummy variable—used rhetorically to defer deeper ontological commitments.  As from all of us all the time?
>>> 
>>> 6) Participatory Reality:
>>> 
>>> Reality as not wholly determinate until observed or enacted—that is, it co-arises with participation.
>>> 
>>> 7) Linguistic Manifold Reality:
>>> 
>>> LLMs inhabit and approximate intersubjective reality.  Each language model represents a “manifold” within a semantic plenum. “Reality” is the high-dimensional attractor surface that forms when enough participants (biological or artificial) converge on something shareable, predictive, and compressible.
>>> 
>>> Enactivism / Autopoiesis / Dependent Co-Arising (EAC) is not a single category in this typology—it is a meta-theory of reality-generation, operating across:
>>> 
>>> Operational → it explains the conditions for affordances
>>> 
>>> Intersubjective → it explains how we co-construct the shared
>>> 
>>> Experiential → it explains how we inhabit the lived
>>> 
>>> Participatory → it explains why observation creates reality
>>> 
>>> And it gently critiques:
>>> 
>>> Formal → by showing its limits
>>> 
>>> Placeholder → by showing its necessity
>>> 
>>> LLM-based → by asking what is missing for full participation
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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