There’s one (okay, more like 1.6) major problem with that quote, everything else being otherwise good:
The implicitly absolute categorization of “love” as “ideal”, and the likewise-implicit (sneaky?) connotation that love is not as real as it is ideal or marriage as ideal as it is real.
Love is a very real thing. There are very real, natural, empirically-observable and testable things happening for whatever someone identifies as “love”. However, further discussion is problematic, as “love” has become such a wide-reaching symbol that it becomes almost essential to specify just what interpretation, definition or sub-element of “love” we’re talking about in most contexts if ambiguity is to be avoided.
Goethe is writing in a time influenced by German Romanticism (for which he was partly guilty); it would not be amiss if one were to capitalize love there as ‘Love’ - an abstraction, not some empirical neural correlates.
I’m not quite sure what this abstraction would even correspond to. In fact, when I ask myself what abstract meaning ‘Love’ could possibly have, I find myself confused. It seems there might be some ‘Love’ somewhere that feels like it is the ideal, abstract ‘Love’, but no matter where I search I cannot find it on my map.
I’d like it if you could help me map this “abstract ideal” in my conceptspace map, if that’s possible.
It’s not worth trying to understand beyond Goethe having fun at some idealists’ expense. I took a course on Romanticism, and came out with little better understanding than you have now.
When mapping labels (symbols) to their underlying concepts, look for the distinction, not the concept. Distinctions divide a particular perspective of the map; each side of the distinction being marked with a label. In early Greek philosophy the opposites were: love and strife (see empedocles.)
(An abstraction corresponds to a class of distinctions, where each particular distinction of the class, corresponds to another abstraction.)
Oh! That makes a lot more sense. It doesn’t seem like the most reliable technique, but this particular term is now a lot clearer. Thanks!
Of course, this seems to me like ‘Love’ is then merely a general “Interface Method”, to be implemented depending on the Class in whatever manner, in context, will go against strife and/or promote well-being of cared-for others.
Which is indeed not something real, but a simple part of a larger utility function, in a sense.
A good resource on distinctions (if you are not yet aware of it), is George Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form. These ideas are being further explored (Bricken, Awbrey), and various resources on boundary logic and differential logic, are now available on the web.
I’m not really sure Laws of Form is a good resource, and I’m not sure it’s good at all. A crazy philosophy acquaintance of mine recommended it, so I read it, and couldn’t make very much of it (although I was disturbed that the author apparently thought he had proved the four-color theorem?). Searching, I got the impression that one could say of the book ‘what was good in it was not original, and what was original was not good’; later I came across a post by a Haskeller/mathematician I respect implementing it in Haskell which concluded much the same thing:
So, Laws of Form succeeds in defining a boolean style algebra and propositional style calculus. It then shows how to build circuits using logic gates. And that, as far as I can see, is the complete content of the book. It’s fun, it works, but it’s not very profound and I don’t think that even in its day it could have been terribly original. (Who first proved NAND and NOT gates are universal? Sheffer? Peirce?) In my view this makes GSB’s mathematics not of the crackpot variety, despite his talk of imaginary logical values....So my final opinion, for all of the two cents that it’s worth, is that GSB is a little on the crackpot side, but that his mathematics in Laws of Form is sound, fun, cute, but, despite the trappings, not terribly profound.
Not to say that everyone is a heathen ;-) but as for those who missed out on the subtlety of my original Goethe post … if they wish to further advertise their lack of sophistication … diss this post.
Please ignore this, unless you are a hydrophobic Canis antarcticus, barking up the wrong tree. Its only purpose is to provide a pissing post to discourage the great unwashed from otherwise fouling the streets. With any luck the post, complete with its surrounding territory, will soon disappear completely off the bottom of the map. There, unfettered by the strictures of reason, the pack can feel free to bark and scratch, whilst attending to their compulsions to lick the sweat off each others balls.
It is not a lack of sophistication to fail to immediately grasp and assume-true one single subtle undermeaning/interpretation of a vague statement.
It is rational prudence. It is the wilful, deliberate, careful act of steeling one’s mind to the resolute knowledge that things are uncertain, and of not seeing patterns where there merely might be, of not projecting meanings onto phrases where meanings are in the mind, of applying what is learned and trained and practiced here on LessWrong.
Or, it might also simply indicate the lack of social training towards guessing passwords.
I am new to LW, and I don’t get it; this is supposed to be a forum promoting rationality, and anyone who dissed this comment appears to be behaving re-actively.
Any rational justifications as to why anyone would respond to the above comment are welcomed, and may be appended below.
The problem is that you seem to be underestimating the relevant inferential distance. Specifically you’re using a lot of jargon in both this and the parent, and we have no idea what you’re talking about.
Another Goethe quote, whilst on that tack; seems appropriate for disciples of GS.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There’s one (okay, more like 1.6) major problem with that quote, everything else being otherwise good:
The implicitly absolute categorization of “love” as “ideal”, and the likewise-implicit (sneaky?) connotation that love is not as real as it is ideal or marriage as ideal as it is real.
Love is a very real thing. There are very real, natural, empirically-observable and testable things happening for whatever someone identifies as “love”. However, further discussion is problematic, as “love” has become such a wide-reaching symbol that it becomes almost essential to specify just what interpretation, definition or sub-element of “love” we’re talking about in most contexts if ambiguity is to be avoided.
Goethe is writing in a time influenced by German Romanticism (for which he was partly guilty); it would not be amiss if one were to capitalize love there as ‘Love’ - an abstraction, not some empirical neural correlates.
I’m not quite sure what this abstraction would even correspond to. In fact, when I ask myself what abstract meaning ‘Love’ could possibly have, I find myself confused. It seems there might be some ‘Love’ somewhere that feels like it is the ideal, abstract ‘Love’, but no matter where I search I cannot find it on my map.
I’d like it if you could help me map this “abstract ideal” in my conceptspace map, if that’s possible.
It’s not worth trying to understand beyond Goethe having fun at some idealists’ expense. I took a course on Romanticism, and came out with little better understanding than you have now.
When mapping labels (symbols) to their underlying concepts, look for the distinction, not the concept. Distinctions divide a particular perspective of the map; each side of the distinction being marked with a label. In early Greek philosophy the opposites were: love and strife (see empedocles.)
(An abstraction corresponds to a class of distinctions, where each particular distinction of the class, corresponds to another abstraction.)
Oh! That makes a lot more sense. It doesn’t seem like the most reliable technique, but this particular term is now a lot clearer. Thanks!
Of course, this seems to me like ‘Love’ is then merely a general “Interface Method”, to be implemented depending on the Class in whatever manner, in context, will go against strife and/or promote well-being of cared-for others.
Which is indeed not something real, but a simple part of a larger utility function, in a sense.
A good resource on distinctions (if you are not yet aware of it), is George Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form. These ideas are being further explored (Bricken, Awbrey), and various resources on boundary logic and differential logic, are now available on the web.
I’m not really sure Laws of Form is a good resource, and I’m not sure it’s good at all. A crazy philosophy acquaintance of mine recommended it, so I read it, and couldn’t make very much of it (although I was disturbed that the author apparently thought he had proved the four-color theorem?). Searching, I got the impression that one could say of the book ‘what was good in it was not original, and what was original was not good’; later I came across a post by a Haskeller/mathematician I respect implementing it in Haskell which concluded much the same thing:
Not to say that everyone is a heathen ;-) but as for those who missed out on the subtlety of my original Goethe post … if they wish to further advertise their lack of sophistication … diss this post.
Please ignore this, unless you are a hydrophobic Canis antarcticus, barking up the wrong tree. Its only purpose is to provide a pissing post to discourage the great unwashed from otherwise fouling the streets. With any luck the post, complete with its surrounding territory, will soon disappear completely off the bottom of the map. There, unfettered by the strictures of reason, the pack can feel free to bark and scratch, whilst attending to their compulsions to lick the sweat off each others balls.
It is not a lack of sophistication to fail to immediately grasp and assume-true one single subtle undermeaning/interpretation of a vague statement.
It is rational prudence. It is the wilful, deliberate, careful act of steeling one’s mind to the resolute knowledge that things are uncertain, and of not seeing patterns where there merely might be, of not projecting meanings onto phrases where meanings are in the mind, of applying what is learned and trained and practiced here on LessWrong.
Or, it might also simply indicate the lack of social training towards guessing passwords.
I am new to LW, and I don’t get it; this is supposed to be a forum promoting rationality, and anyone who dissed this comment appears to be behaving re-actively.
Any rational justifications as to why anyone would respond to the above comment are welcomed, and may be appended below.
It is rational to downvote comments you want to see fewer of, and your failed attempt at trolling certainly qualifies.
The problem is that you seem to be underestimating the relevant inferential distance. Specifically you’re using a lot of jargon in both this and the parent, and we have no idea what you’re talking about.