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Relativistic Dialectics            Relativistic Dialectics
Georges Metanomski
Reflection Spiral

In one of the letters written to the Infeld group in Warsaw Einstein wrote:
"A new manner of thinking is essential if humankind is to survive."

Reflection Spiral
-----------------

In "Model of Mind" we defined Reflection as follows:

[ Human Reason encompasses Lateral Thinking or Reflection consisting of two basic faculties:
1. Symbolizing, or mapping Imagery to Symbolics
2. Understanding, or mapping Symbolics to Imagery.

We SYMBOLIZE by mapping Patterns and Images of Imagery into Entity/Relation network structures of Symbolics which we may express with Statements
(or Propositions) and Symbols of our languages. We UNDERSTAND ER network structures as well as linguistic Statements and Symbols by imagining them, by mapping them to Imagery, which confers on them signification and meaning. ]

In the chapter "Linguistic Inversion" we shall discuss in detail the basic linguistic structure "[Entity] is [Attribute]", eg. "my car is green". We shall distinguish between:

-Noumenalistic view considering Entity and Attribute as ontologically different and Entity as "Container of Attributes" existing as such independently of containing any or no Attributes.

-Phenomenalistic view, for which Entity is a collection of Attributes and nothing else: a single Attribute is already a full blown, legitimate Entity and if all Attributes vanish, the Entity, being nothing more than their collection, vanishes on the same occasion.

Noumenalism being banned from rationality since Kant, we embrace the Phenomenalistic view. Thus in our example "green" is on the one hand an Entity and, on the other hand, a more general Entity than "my car", which it encompasses among trillions of other green Entities.

We prefer the term "Reflection" than "Lateral Thinking" because "Lateral" and "Thinking" are overcharged with traditional, often misleading denotations. "Reflection", less overloaded, has the advantage of evoking Imagery and Symbolics as reciprocally reflecting one another. We shall see Mind's activity as incessant dynamic circle of Reflections elongated along the time dimension into a spiral. (Fig. 1)



Symbolic structures of Fig 1 are shown in some detail in Fig 2. with help of following conventions:

1. Relation is represented by an arrow pointing from "Aggregate" (more general Entity of related couple) to less general Entity or "Part", like, for instance, "colour" points to "black" and "white" in Fig 2. Relation supports the function of "Inferencing" in two oriented manners:
1.1. Deduction in the "Top-down", "encompass" or "general-to-particular" direction.
1.2. Induction in the "Bottom-up", "be encompassed" or "particular-to-general" direction.

Symbolic structure is organized by Relations and thus has two Aspects: Deductive and Inductive.

2. Entities have 3 Aspects:
2.1. Abstract Entity or "Class" represented graphically as red.
2.2. Concrete Entity or "Set" represented graphically as black.
2.3. Factual Entity or "Fact" represented graphically as green.

Within Deductive structure all Entities are Abstract Classes. Within Inductive structure an Aggregate Class may be "concretised" and become a Set when it encompasses a Fact or, recurrently, a Set as Part.

Some of the above terms will be discussed in detail in the part "Foundations of Construct Theory" (RD's substitute of Set Theory).


It's of course difficult to illustrate the "incessant dynamic circle of Reflections" with an oversimplified graphic diagram. In reality there is no starting "Schema" point where we would be aware exclusively of some particular symbolic structure. For illustration's sake we suppose in our example a situation where we read or hear something about "moon" and our attention switches to this issue, concentrating our awareness on the corresponding substructure of the global symbolic structure of our knowledge, of our Universe of Discourse.

NOTE: Such terms as Inferencing, Deduction, Induction imply the domain of Logic. It will be discussed in the part "Modeling versus Logic", particularly in its parts "Crisis of Noumenalism " and "RD's Phenomenalistic Logic". The present chapter deals with RD's Epistemological Foundations of Logic.

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