Context

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Einai 2014-05-05 00:30:46 16960

seth 2014-05-04 21:39:18 16960

source: mark
... & you & I will be deleted as contexts on death too in ~ 30 years ...
maybe contexts don't depend upon people after all; your mileage may vary.

well you and i probably have different associations to the word "context". i call a collection of related marks and events and relationships collected by some being a "context". it is a simple mathematical concept. once collected the collection can change but nothing can really delete it as such. but of course people's awareness of the context changes as they move on to other contexts. i realize that is a mathematical description with no spiritual or mystical associations ... but that is all that i need for the sake of analysis and mental comprehension of context for use in predicting and modeling reality. but as you can see, by definition, such contexts absolutely depend on some being to do the collecting. sans the collector, i can think of nothing that i could call context ... or for that matter, that i could call anything at all

Pretty wrong about that - neither mathematical is your definition nor a correct idea about context except your made up stuff. Context is a distinction about the way you hold other distinctions = not mystical nor magical nor mathematical - at most a classification of ontological things.

Well strangely enough it seems we identified the same features of what most people refer to when the use the word "context". You see in my definition, i enumerted some to the things that you lump into a term calld "other distinctions". I said those "other distinctions" could be such things as marks and events and relationships. Then too i specified that this whole maze would not exist were it not for some agent collecting it ... you just lumped all of that into the pronoun "you".

Incidentally i didn't make mine up, rather it was developed by a community that has been trying to automate intelligence and how to mechanically understand natural language.

We seem to agree that these descriptions do not rely upon magic or mysticism. Rather they are analytic definitions. Mine is specific enough that it could be (and has been) written as a mathematical formula ... and/or modeled within a computer. If you think of the old CyberMind, a context is just a menton ... it is a collection of interrelated things.

source: mark continues

You hold that your context is a the set of (or the residue you hold of such) of all your internal & external experiences as described above; partially digested no doubt by cognition elsewhere explained. Such apparently can't be permanentized outside you & probably dies with you. Yep we can write about it but that depends upon the same from others. etc....

ZZzz....

Well my contexts are specific ... not, as you say above "all internal and external experiences" ... but rather only those that show up in at any given grocking. So that we can use contextual analysis to say something like: "A" means this in that context, while in this context if means something quite different. And if we were pressed we could list (or collect) the statements in this or in that context. As such this kind of context is an analytic tool.

And yes, that kind of context can be permanentized outside of a person, just by listing the language statements that constitute any given one of that person's contexts. A daunting task no doubt even for a simple context.

source: mark
The example I use all the time is the context of an objective world i.e. something outside yourself that you interact with. A World exists outside yourself. Some sci-fi movies like the Matrix had a different context of everything is inside a computer.

... for me, the context of an object world, would be way too vast of a thingey to collect.

Comments

Mark de LA says

BTW this is called a boatswain's chair:

Seth says

Einai 2014-05-05 07:15:32 17356

So you made up your own meaning for the word context . Good for you. I won't be using that one.

well you might want to go do some research and see which definition was made up and whih one was taken from a body of literature. if you want i can provide some references for mine.

anyway i am not so very sure i understand what you mean when you use the word "context" ... but this is what i mean when i say it. if you do care to listen to what i write, then you might just want to adopt an attitude that will allow us to accurately communicate ... er, or not

Seth says

there are many of my mentographic studies of context here.

Mark de LA says

seth 2014-05-05 08:02:48 17356

source: mark
As a postscript on yours it seems more appropriate to a computer's ontology. Mine is more one belonging within being. Mine has a characteristic of a hierarchy of distinctions within the senses 12+ of them; yours is more an anarchy of something.

... well, yes quite so. My definition came right out of the AI of the 70's. I think it started with Guha and MaCarthy' seminal paper, Varieties of Contexts. There is nothing of "anarchy" in my definition ... just only that which can be analytically described and processed mechanically with automated logic.

I have tried to identify those things that seem to be common between our views of this concept: agency, and "other distinctions". But you seem to be combining more into your concept than is in mine ... being, hierachy, and even senses. I won't know specifically what you mean by it unless you describe it much more specifically.

Been doing that for years ... I'm happy with mine. You're happy in your linguistically computerized universe with yours.
One of the first arguments I got into with my friend JJ in the navy with computers was about AI (circa 1971). He had something to do with the Navy's version of the Internet after I left. I claim a computer will never be able to think like a human, in retrospect, because a computer is not conscious like a human is. He claimed otherwise. Computers can do lots of things imitating human behavior, however they do not possess a sense for language like humans have.
Who cares? Your context? My context? Who knows? We keep on living until we don't!

Seth says

Mark de LA says

There really is something outside yourself, Seth

seth above: ... .. for me, the context of an object world, would be way too vast of a thingey to collect.

... Who said you are in charge of collecting it?

Seth says

Well this AI concept of "context" is used to improve the understanding of natural language. It can also be used to predict a person's psychological response to a communication. Give them one context and they will respond to something in one way, give them another contex and they will respond to the same thing quite differently. It is just a matter of what shows up for them in some moment. For example if i prefix my remarks with the idea that you are full of shit, i doubt that you will be reading my words for what they mean to me ... rather other unintended things about our relationship would be showing up instead.

To be honest with you i do not understand your concept of context ... but, i will listen intently if you tell me.

Mark de LA says

seth 2014-05-05 10:35:45 17356

source: mark
Try reading what you quoted in the body of they item. How many ways do I have to say the same thing for it to penetrate your own computer program? Maybe try decreasing the gain on your own mismatching of it.

hmmm ... well starting with that context ... what do your honestly expect me to do?

Try the context of human if you can find it. I am not interested in the context of computer language when I discuss the ontology & distinction called context in any other context at this time & will get back to you.

Seth says

Incidentally this AI conception of context is useful to understanding things like "context sensitivity" and "context insensitivity". Something that is context insensitive means the same in all contexts ... something that context sensitive might mean one thing in one context and another thing in another context. As you can see this is all about language.

But the same conception can be used to analyze any human thought according to what shows up to that being at the moment of apprehension.

Seth says

hmmm ... well starting with that context ... what do your honestly expect me to do?

Mark de LA says

seth 2014-05-05 10:35:45 17356

hmmm ... well starting with that context ... what do your honestly expect me to do?

I have no suggestions at this time besides my original one.
I have a good deal of respect for your quads thingy. But that is not the meaning of context outside computer linguistics which is what I mostly talk about.
We all have a world outlook or personal ontology that is not in a computer nor does it depend upon computer linguistics. I have several which explain within how the world works for me.
Such are held within contexts. There are others who hold these same contexts & personalize their own with experience. Some of them expressed in duality (charge +/-) is my own guess but some are:

world as caused by others - world as caused by me
my life as caused by others - my life as caused by me
world/universe as created - universe as mechanical (spinning atomic particles & energy)
body-soul-spirit ... psychology (id, ego, superego, soma)
past, present future - timeless being
hierarchy network anarchy - personal munge of experience

I use mostly the Zen definition of context as the way you hold things - a distinction that holds other distinctions . Everyone makes distinctions they might not use that word though. An objective world is one of the first that shows up as a baby when it cries because it wants something it doesn't have automatically like a tit full of milk. Child contexts arrive as language arrives; language being a sense. etc. I'm not going to be able to go the whole 72 yrs of experience & mental activity here in this little box.

Mark de LA says

seth 2014-05-06 08:42:34 17356

Einai 2014-05-06 08:28:21 17356

seth 2014-05-06 08:24:30 17356

so just in broad strokes, how many contexts would you say you ever have?

many - they are distinctions of distinctions - you are asking how many distinctions I have which in language is ~ 100,000 words but combos into sentences & then the ones that have no words etc. endless perhaps or countless or ?
I could do a better job if I knew why you are asking or what an answer of your question would do for you.

how many contexts do your have? ... not how many distinctions. The way you have described your contexts above it almost sounds like you have identified only 6. Are those 6 perhaps classes of contexts? ... or are those instances of contexts? I'm just trying to understand your ontology here.

Did you miss the part where I said a context is a distinction also? Those were examples. The +/- charge or whether I use them I left to your imagination.

Seth says

Einai 2014-05-06 08:28:21 17356

seth 2014-05-06 08:24:30 17356

so just in broad strokes, how many contexts would you say you ever have?

Mark de LA says

BTW, I learned via NLP that one can travel up & down in the context tree from the specific to the general with questions such as

What else is similar to that in your life?
What else is like that for you?
How do you handle other things like that?
....

& from the general to the specific with questions like:

How specifically ...
What specifically are you talking about ?
Where specifically does it hurt?
.....

They are the Milton Model & the Meta Model of NLP. I just generalized from there.

Mark de LA says

seth 2014-05-06 09:09:06 17356

Well i totally understand a tree of distinctions. I think we both use that word "distinction" in the same way.

Are you saying that in your ontology that the word "distinction" and the word "context" are interchangeable? If not, then what is the difference between them?

I mentioned above, didn't I, that there is a hierarchy of distinctions ? The highest level was the objective world (or maybe not given other ontologies) ... some of the other examples were similarly high. But, they are distinctions in experience. GW had me imagine that what I see is just dynamically painted on the inside of my eyeball. That could be another. One could go through a bunch & classify them but for what? a computer? The farther away one gets from the higher levels he more one finds more direct input from the senses & less from the mind until cognition munges the experience. They are still all distinctions - i.e. something which whittles down the signal from the noise.

Seth says

Mark de LA says

... so that one can grasp it - hence the PR phrase there is nothing outside of the way you hold it.

Mark de LA says

Well, GW's ZZ was an amusement of organizing time by category rather than linear birth -> death; really nothing about context except at the

Another distinction about context is that it gives something an isness of the character of a thing. The oft repeated phrase "there is a chair over there but, there is not a chair over there" what a thing is depends upon context. I could go out in the forest & find a log and park my ass on it and call it my chair. In fact I could take my oak wooden piece of furniture, sold me in a furniture store, & put it in the fireplace and say it is not a chair it is firewood, etc. Context provides the semantics of what a thing is or the way you hold it to separate if from the sea of impressions of the senses to hold it within experience & grok (cognize) it.

Mark de LA says

seth 2014-05-07 07:25:25 17356

source: mark
Another distinction about context is that it gives something an isness of the character of a thing. The oft repeated phrase "there is a chair over there but, there is not a chair over there" what a thing is depends upon context. I could go out in the forest & find a log and park my ass on it and call it my chair. In fact I could take my oak wooden piece of furniture, sold me in a furniture store, & put it in the fireplace and say it is not a chair it is firewood, etc. Context provides the semantics of what a thing is or the way you hold it to separate if from the sea of impressions of the senses to hold it within experience & grok (cognize) it.

...

. Ok, as far as i can tell, then, that is the same thing that i call "context"

.

I, and others, have just highlighted the two elements that are present when we say there is a "context" there: (1) the collection of situations (your other distinctions), and (2) a being who has made (collected) them.

Do you see those two salient elements in your understanding of context? Have you ever known of a something that you would call a "context" which did not have both of those elements? If those two elements are present in some thingey should we not call that thingey a "context" ?

Your language is a bit tangential to what I am talking about which is about an individual world outlook & ontology. You can talk about your context in that way, but I wouldn't necessarily do so, for my own. Your (1) & (2) have ideas which are hazy. No individual goes around collecting situations. Nobody is collecting anything as far as I can tell in my own individual life .. except perhaps here but that purpose is more communication than anything else. A computer might collect ontological components however; being useful for the semantic web. I suspect that an individual's evolution of context & distinction is a process which isn't intentional & conscious.

Seth says

...

. Ok, as far as i can tell, then, that is the same thing that i call "context"

Seth says

Einai 2014-05-06 09:29:12 17356

seth 2014-05-06 09:09:06 17356

Well i think i understand most of what you are saying about a hierarchy of distinctions here. Distinctions go from the most general to the more specific just as we get closer to our senses. But i am still trying to get at the the differnece between that hierachy of distinctions and what you call context. In other words i still do not know what you mean when you say "Context is a distinction about the way you hold other distinctions".

But let me cut to the chase. GW introduced his famous idea, and i know you grabbed it too, about the possibility of all of your experiences of one type being the same thing ... so that if you lumped all of your shits of the same distinct type together, that would be that kind of shit in your life. You probably could describe that better ... i just sketched it off the cuff. Now, i think the actual existence of that kind of ontology would lend itself to what i get from your description of a context being the way you hold those distinctions. That and your surprising refusal to say that a context is a instance or something rather than just another distinction. I think most analytic thought is quite content to draw a distinction between instances of things and distinctions. I just wonder if we are here on the horns of refusing to do so.

Mark de LA says

If you choose something else for the meaning of context - kewl! You may even claim agreement with mine but stated within your own language & context of context - that's fine.

ME: ... Context is the way you hold a distinction. Context is a distinction itself in that it needs likewise to separate something for one to focus on from out of the noise of all the senses.

... what could be simpler?

Mark de LA says

Einai 2014-05-07 07:54:27 17356

NLP studies belief mechanisms fairly well.

Then too meta^^3 (meta to the third power) goes way too far from direct experience that or even regular experience that I am inclined to glaze over it's utility.

Seth says

Einai 2014-05-07 08:40:35 17356

If you choose something else for the meaning of context - kewl! You may even claim agreement with mine but stated within your own language & context of context - that's fine.

ME: ... Context is the way you hold a distinction. Context is a distinction itself in that it needs likewise to separate something for one to focus on from out of the noise of all the senses.

... what could be simpler?

Well the important thing, from my perspective, is to determine if i know what you point to when you point to something and call it a "context". I presume that a complementary thing would also be important to you. For example, you say "I am talking about which is about an individual world outlook & ontology" ... well to me that *is* a context ... the individual is the being ... the world view and ontology is the collection.

Incidentally in my word "collection" i am using the mathmatical definition. I could have said "set" but there are some other pesky notions that go with that word, so i prefer not to use it here. There is no connotation of "going around collecting", except that the being who is distinguishing the context was the agent that made the collection exist. If the context is in your mind, then that would be you ... if the context is in some literature, well then it would be collectively the authors of the literature. The point is that the context is subjective to that being. If we are oblivious to the recognition that a being is responsible for the context, then me thinks we are still confused.

Mark de LA says

seth 2014-05-07 09:59:32 17356

Einai 2014-05-07 08:40:35 17356

If you choose something else for the meaning of context - kewl! You may even claim agreement with mine but stated within your own language & context of context - that's fine.

ME: ... Context is the way you hold a distinction. Context is a distinction itself in that it needs likewise to separate something for one to focus on from out of the noise of all the senses.

... what could be simpler?

I am not confused. I have context & distinction as I have expressed it & hold it.
Quite simple, eh?

If yours is different - be blessed!
I need no further elaboration & am happy.
Maybe go on to something else (or not).

Seth says

Einai 2014-05-07 12:00:55 17356

Well, dude, I didn't say you said I was confused. I gave you my simple statement which needs no elaboration by anyone, but you may want to keep the conversation going on your own stream of consciousness or not. I am complete with it all & need nothing else on it at this time.

At some time people may need to declare they are complete with whatever has happened & move on! That is my recommendation here.

well real nice that *you* are complete here

.

Could you let me know if you ever do figure out why i would not be?

Seth says

Einai 2014-05-07 10:19:48 17356

seth 2014-05-07 09:59:32 17356

Einai 2014-05-07 08:40:35 17356

If you choose something else for the meaning of context - kewl! You may even claim agreement with mine but stated within your own language & context of context - that's fine.

ME: ... Context is the way you hold a distinction. Context is a distinction itself in that it needs likewise to separate something for one to focus on from out of the noise of all the senses.

... what could be simpler?

I am not confused. I have context & distinction as I have expressed it & hold it.
Quite simple, eh?

If yours is different - be blessed!
I need no further elaboration & am happy.
Maybe go on to something else (or not).

Come on now Mark ... i did not say you were confused ... nor did i even imply it. !!!

twisting this conversation now into some kind of quiggy snaggy rwgey bs is just soooo out of it.

Before we are aware of something ... er, before we distinguish it ... we can say that we are in a condition of confusion about it ... or perhaps more accurately in a condition of not knowing about it ... or of not being aware of it. That was the sense in which i was talking. I am saying "we" here quite intentionally because the being in this context actually is both of us.

Seth says

source: mark
I am complete with that. You CAN be complete with that or you can try to get more & I am complete with that too. Completeness is a declaration to let things be as they are instead of finding or looking for that there still exists as something wrong for oneself. It declares that that which is, IS! One may not like such, but one can always move on, evolve, & create something new. The only completeness that Seth is in charge of is SETH.
You can be whole & complete with what happens - or not .. your choice .. not mine!

Well i never was looking for something wrong here, rather I was looking for a meeting of minds ... a combining of your context of "context" with mine. That never really happened even though as far as i can tell, our concepts of context are very similar.

Incidentally i have no trouble with ending this discussion here ... you can end it too, just do not respond and more to this item.

Seth says

Einai 2014-05-08 07:33:59 17356

seth 2014-05-08 07:30:57 17356

Einai 2014-05-08 07:10:27 17356

seth 2014-05-08 04:22:22 17356

Einai 2014-05-07 12:00:55 17356

At some time people may need to declare they are complete with whatever has happened & move on! That is my recommendation here.

well real nice that *you* are complete here

.

Could you let me know if you ever do figure out why i would not be?

Because you haven't listened?

no that is not why.

How do you know it isn't? Have you listened?

yes i have listened to you intently and in detail on a number of levels.

Context

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