Source: Derek Cabrera, "Distinctions, Systems, Relationships, Perspectives: The Simple Rules of Complex Conceptual Systems: A Universal Descriptive Grammar of Cognition" - Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Meeting of the ISSS - 2008, Madison, Wisconsin, International Society for the Systems Sciences (D) Making Distinctions – which consist of an identity and an other (S) Organizing Systems … Continue reading Derek Cabrera’s principles and axioms of conceptual systems

The following 'seven theses' can be found in Richard Jung's "A quaternion of metaphors for the hermeneutics of life,” a paper presented at the International Conference of the Society for General Systems Research, Los Angeles, California, 1985.  "They are the metaphors ORGANISM, MACHINE, MIND, and TEMPLATE. I am calling them a QUATERNION, employing the term … Continue reading "A Quaternion of metaphors for the hermeneutics of life," by Richard Jung

If you stand in any gathering in the public or private, business or institutional world, and try to make a philosophical point, you will be in a minority. Most of the time a "minority of one" as the saying goes.  Managers and  bureaucrats surrounding you will either excuse themselves or simply ignore your point saying … Continue reading Anti-philosophical metaphysics

The reader may know the work of Charles B. Handy, a British organisation theorist who summarised his knowledge in the books "Understanding Organisations" and "The Gods of Management." Handy's theories were frequently quoted in academic and business management publications, as they gave a compact way of describing the various possible "styles" of organisational management. The … Continue reading On Fiske’s Elementary Forms of Sociality (2)

In “The Self-Organizing Social Mind,” (MIT, 2010) John Bolender presents an interesting but slanted account of Alan P.Fiske’s Relational Model of sociality, as well as a theory of how these models might be explained. The essence of Bolender’s explanation is the notion of “symmetry breaking” as applied to forms of sociality. But, going away from … Continue reading On Fiske’s Elementary Forms of Sociality (1)

In “La Libertad en la Filosofía de la Cuadratura de Heidegger,” Alejandro Rojas Jiménez continues his analysis of the Quadrature as follows: “Empezaré por exponer el sentido simbólico de los Mortales como los que son capaces de la muerte como muerte. El sentido fundamental de esta definición es que sólo él vive ante la presencia … Continue reading A.R. Jiménez on the Quadrature

The Quadrature has been formulated and discovered or re-discovered many times in history. A book might be written to explain how and when the Quadrature is forgotten or recedes into the background. Perhaps the least understood formulation is that of Martin Heidegger. As M. Robitaille notes, following the studies by Jean-Francois Mattéi, Heideger´s “quadrature” (Geviert … Continue reading The Quadrature : Le Quadriparti – La Cuadratura

If we don’t think and speak Being, then we think and speak in oppositions and remain in oppositions. Our action then is self-defeating, banal and incomplete. Now, human thinking and speech necessarily blossoms and opens up as a series of differentiations, each one presenting us with a fragment of of the world. The basic differentiations … Continue reading The Fourfold Thoughts Of Being

In these  pages I frequently refer to and build upon a structure with four “modes” or “terms” – namely those of Person, Subject, Agent and Object. At its core, this model is not original, and stems from the work of many disparate authors, in different areas of knowledge. For the sake of rigour and completeness, … Continue reading Quadratures: Person, Subject, Agent and Object

The correlated terms of intensive and extensive abstraction have another antecedent in the reflections of G.W.F Hegel on intensive and extensive “magnitude.”  The following fragments can be found in Hegel’s “Science of Logic- Identity of Intensive and Extensive Magnitude” – sections 480, 481 and 483: “480. The determinateness of intensive magnitude is, therefore, to be … Continue reading Hegel: Intensive And Extensive Magnitude