Dimensions
Chapter 1 - Worldview
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Welcome to the Dimensions page
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Key takeaways
- Dimensions are guiding metaphors for the complex reality that we are and our context is. They structure the totality of our agency
Direction provides the 'expansiveness' of your world model
Hidden layers are fields created by the 'action' and 'evaluation' dimension
On top, all layers together create the third 'potention' dimension
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Core idea
What are dimensions?
- A measure of spatial extent: magnitude, proportion, size, scope
- A construct whereby objects or individuals can be distinguished: attribute, property
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Dimensional properties
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- We live in a world in which we can model our actions at a conceptual level on 3 dimensions:
- 2 core dimensions
- Action dimension (from autonomy to participation)
- Evaluation dimension (from coherence to conectedness)
- 3th emergent dimension
- Potention dimension (from competences to relevance)
- 2 core dimensions
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- Dimensions don't 'exist as described and drawn' here. It is only a 'representation'. The dimensions on the drawings are deliberately not drawn straight to give shape to the capriciousness of human nature
- Each of them is everything (an infinite number of possible decisions) between two (paradoxical) extremities (see next page, directions)
- Together they shape the totality of our world: the choise out of all possible models between 3 dimensions with infinite decision points
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The 2 core dimensions
To define 'dimensions' we rely heavily on the work of Peter Godfrey-Smith and Daniel Dennett on Darwinian space. What we call here the action dimension, Peter Godfrey-Smith calls the H-dimension. The evaluation dimensions he calls the C-dimensions, and the relevance dimension the S-dimension.
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First - Action dimension
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- From "What is important to me" (AUTONOMY) to
- "What is important for us" (PARTICIPATION)
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- This dimension indicates our importance to life (our ability to reproduce), creating patterns.
- It captures the tension between our interests and our interest in being part of our group and, by extension, of humanity.
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| Darwinian space core concept: 'H eritability' |
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| The dimension, H, is an analogue of the conventional concept of heritconcept, is independent of genetics. (Darwin had no theory of genetics; he only required some degree of correlation of characters between parents and offspring.) |
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Second - Evaluation dimension
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- From "What has meaning to me" (COHERENCE) to
- "What is the meaning for us" (CONNECTEDNESS - INVOLVEMENT)
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- This dimension captures how we evaluate the context around us for its usefulness in the first dimension, creating principles.
- Life created emotions to facilitate this process.
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| Darwinian space core concept: 'C haracteristics of individual agents' |
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| The dimension, C, concerns the continuity of changes in fitness values with changes in characteristics (or phenotypes) of individuals. This roughly mirrors the ruggedness or smoothness of a fitness landscape, especially when the characters considered are genetic states of a population of organisms. |
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Although the action and evaluation dimensions are distinct, they are inseparably linked biologically, neurologically, and culturally
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The 3th emergent dimension
Third - Potention dimension
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- From "My competences" (COMPETENCES) to
- "The relevance of actions for the bigger situation" (RELEVANCE)
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- This dimension arises from the bodily, cognitive, cultural, and contextual experiences that the two previous dimensions (action and evaluation) undergo over time.
- By combining the patterns with the principles, the bodily, cognitive, cultural, ..., context creates processes.
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| Darwinian space core concept: 'reproductive S uccess' |
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| The dimension, S, measures the dependence of reproductive success (‘realized fitness’) on ‘intrinsic’ versus ‘relational’ or ‘extrinsic’ characters of the parents. High S corresponds to reproductive success depending on intrinsic characters. This allows distinctions between ‘accidental’ success (one twin killed by lightning before reproducing, the other with numerous offspring) and success due to intrinsic features and is a crucial component of Godfrey-Smith’s novel analysis of genetic drift. |
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Dive deeper
Hannah Arendt - a philosophical view
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| Hannah Arendt - The life of the Mind - Language and metaphor |
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| Just as ‘appearing beings living in a world of appearances’ have an urge to show themselves, so thinking beings, which still belong to the world of appearances even after they have mentally withdrawn from it, have an urge to speak and thus to make manifest what otherwise would not be a part of the appearing world at all. But while appearingness as such demands and presupposes the presence of spectators, thinking in its need of speech does not demand or necessarily presuppose auditors: communication with our fellow men would not necessitate human language with its intricate complexity of grammar and syntax.
The language of animals-sounds, signs, gestures-would be amply sufficient to serve all immediate needs, not only for self-preservation and the preservation of the species, but also for making evident the moods and emotions of the soul. It is not our soul but our mind that demands speech. … The sheer naming of things, the creation of words, is the human way of appropriating and, as it were, desalinating the world into which, after all, each of us is born as a newcomer and a stranger. ... Thus, implicit in the urge to speak is the quest for meaning, not necessarily the quest for truth. ... Of all human needs, only ‘the need of reason’ could never be adequately met without discursive thought, and discursive thought is inconceivable without words already meaningful … Oxford dictionary, [which] defines 'Metaphor' as the figure of speech In which a name or descriptive term is transferred to some object different from, but analogous to, that to which it is properly applicable. ... the poet likens the tearing onslaught of fear and grief on the hearts of men to the combined onslaught of winds from several directions on the waters of the sea. Think of these storms that you know so well, the poet seems to tell us, and you will know about grief and fear. Significantly, the reverse will not work. No matter how long somebody thinks about grief and fear, he will never find out anything about the winds and the sea. |
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In these short fragments, Hannah Arendt touches upon the core: 'Action/interests/embodiment and Evaluation/values/emotions' can thrive perfectly without 'Potention/thinking/goals'. The latter emerges from 'action and evaluation'. But potention has one great asset: it can search for the truth.
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An artistic perspective
Art is a human way (a medium) in which these three dimensions are constantly investigated and explored.
- First. The roots of action painting lie in the vision in which 'the automatic' is central: the association technique, automatic writing in literature, and, applied to painting, 'automatic' drawing/acting. The artwork is a memory of the act, the action.
- Second.Mark Rothko: "I'm not interested in the relationship of color to form or anything else...I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions - tragedy, ecstasy, and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions... The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you are moved only by their color relationship, then you miss the point."
- Only in the third – emergent – step is the question, 'what is true/possible or not?' relevant. Roeland Tweelinckx plays with a viewer’s perception and comprehension of objects in a certain space. The artist researches its literal and figurative meaning, asking questions. He provokes the viewer to reconsider the situation. His manipulations might not lead to functional results, but their strength lies in their ability to reverse forces and dynamics, to bring what is peripheral to the centre of attention, to defeat expectations of what we consider truth.
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| Action | Evaluation | Potention |
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