The Unmarked and the Marked
Qualifying Existence with Impredicative Hierarchies
Keywords:
Model Theory, modeling, impredicativity, Laws of Form, self-referentialityAbstract
This paper is about models (scientific, psychoanalytic, linguistic, theological or yet otherwise) and about how by ignoring the epistemological and metaphysical implications of the modelling process so ubiquitous in the scientific paradigm of today, we have not only hindered our understanding of phenomena from growing but completely misunderstood the nature of the most fundamental phenomena of being. Notably, the distinction between model and the modelled, or self and the Other is a primordial distinction any model-making edifice has to consider, lest the blowback of negative feedback disentangles the integrity of the model.
References
Alphabetum (2019), Laws of Form: George Spencer Brown, III. September 28 — December 31, 2019, West Den Haag, The Netherlands.
Brier, S. (1996), From Second-order Cybernetics to Cybersemiotics: A Semiotic Re-entry into the Second-order Cybernetics of Heinz von Foerster, Systems Research, 13(3), pp. 229-244.
Deleuze, G (1994), Difference and Repetition, trans. P Patton, Columbia University Press, Columbia.
Dumont, L (1980), Homo Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications, rev., ed., trans. Mark Sainsbury et al., University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 65–66.
Dumont, L. (1986), Essays on Individualism: Modern Ideology in Anthropological Perspective University of Chicago Press, Chicago, pp. 252–53.
Dupuy, J. P. (2013), The Mark of the Sacred, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California.
Evans, D. (1996), An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Routledge, London, pp. 117-9.
Fodor, J. A. (2001), The Mind Doesn't Work That Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology, MIT Press, Massachusetts.
Gödel, K. (1962), On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems, trans. B. Meltzer, Dover Publications, New York.
Gunther, G. (1967), “Time, timeless logic and self-referential systems”, Interdisciplinary Perspectives of Time, New York Academy of Sciences, New York, pp. 396–406.
Hart, D. B. (2019), That All Shall Be Saved, Yale University Press, London.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1977), Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller, Clarendon Press, Oxford, pp. 112-5.
Hofstadter, D. (1979), Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Basic Books, New York.
Kampis, G. (1991), Self-Modifying Systems in Biology and Cognitive Science: A New Framework for Dynamics, IFSR International Series on Systems Science and Engineering, Pergamon Press.
Irigaray, L. (1985), This Sex Which is Not One. Cornell University Press.
Kauffman, S., Longo, G., Montévil, M (2012), “No entailing laws, but enablement in the evolution of the biosphere”, arXiv:1201.2069.
Kineman, J.J. (2011), “Relational Science: A Synthesis”, Axiomathes, 21, DOI:10.1007/s10516-011-9154-z, pp. 393–437.
Koestler, A. (1967), The ghost in the machine, Hutchinson, U.K.
Koestler, A. (1978), Janus: A summing up, Hutchinson, U.K.
Löfgren, L. (1968), “An axiomatic explanation of complete self-reproduction”, Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics, 30(3), pp. 415-425.
Negarestani, R. (2018), Intelligence and Spirit, Urbanomic, MIT Press, Massachusetts.
Rosen, R. (1985), Anticipatory Systems: Philosophical, Mathematical and Methodological Foundations, Pergamon Press.
Rosen, R. (1991), Life Itself: A Comprehensive Inquiry Into the Nature, Origin, and Fabrication of Life, Columbia University.
Spencer-Brown, G. (1979), Laws of Form. E.P. Dutton, Elsevier-Dutton Publishing Co., Inc., New York.
von Foerster, H. (1970), “Molecular Ethology, An Immodest Proposal for Semantic Clarification”, Molecular Mechanisms in Memory and Learning, Plenum Press, New York, pp. 213–248.
von Foerster, H. (1972), “Responsibilities of Competence”, Journal of Cybernetics, 2(2), pp. 1–6.
Wolpert, D. (2007). Physical Limits of Inference. arXiv:0708.1362.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Anubhav Monga
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
