Is teleology necessary to mereology?

Continuing from the last post, even within a mereological containment schema, recall this post earlier in the thread questioning its universal, cross-cultural validity.

This article explicitly connects L&J's image schemas to Piaget's work to the neglect of Vygotsky. It is like the former in that it is a universalistic and individualistic model of cognition.

"Our suggestion, then, is that a nonlinguistic sociocultural difference regarding canonical artifact use, embodied in the material cultures and exemplifed in nonlinguistic cultural practices, gives rise to slightly but significantly different conceptualizations of 'containment' in the different cultures" (35-6).

Along these lines recall this and a few following posts from another thread. Some excerpts:

On this last point, kennilingus and the model of hierarchical complexity (MHC) assume a teleology. For the Lingam it is a morphogenetic gradient from involution that pulls evolution up toward it, like a strange attractor. For the MHC it is both Platonic ideal forms and Aristotelian universal categories. Both require that the lower be subsumed in the higher, and both assume that this higher is the real goal to which evolution is moving. Both require essences.

Integral defined and delimited

Let's take a look at the word integral, since that is one of the defining terms of this forum, and the defining term of an entire philosophical movement. As an adjective it means, among other things, the relation of parts to wholes, aka holons and mereology. Hence the predominant fixation of all things integral with mereology. As a noun it is the integrated whole. It comes from the Latin for whole. Synonyms include essential, indispensable, requisite, hence mereology as the indispensable and requisite factor in kennlingus, including its essentialism. The term lends itself to both the dignity and disaster of kennlingus for choosing this as its defining banner.

Cognitive grammar

I'd mentioned Langacker's cognitive grammar in this post, referencing here one of Langacker's introductory articles on the topic and a free Google book preview on the same topic.

On pp. 6-7 of the book Langacker says something about grammar that I've frequently said about categorization more generally. While there are overlaps between lexicon, morphology and syntax, that doesn't necessary indicate that they don't each have their own definitive boundaries. Traditional syntax, e.g., is defined with a boundary so impenetrable as to be completely unrelated to semantics. Whereas in CG the overlaps between these categories provides for how they relate and thereby opens such strict boundaries. It doesn't eliminate the boundaries but enriches and more accurately defines each domain.

Commentary on Latour

Here's the link to the AIME research group, who is doing summary analyses of Latour's recent book. To date they're up to chapter 10. Here is Latour's website for an ongoing inquiry. At the last link one can participate in the investigation and access the book by joining the site.

I read Conway's analysis of the Intro and chapter 1, along with the voluminous commentary. It is making a point I recently made elsewhere, that this thing called modernity is a western affair. The initial post challenges that it is 'western' in that others from other parts of the world are modern too. But only in so far as they have been educated in western institutions, implying that if left to their own cultural devices they would not be 'modern.' Thus it's a matter of class; the elite class gets a western education and enters modernity.

Drone rationalization

The linguistic wars and levels of complexity

Continuing a recent theme on how a particular grammar affects the formulation of levels of complexity, recall the linguistic wars between Chomsky et al's generative grammar and Lakoff et al's cognitive linguistics? The former said meaning was determined by word order, while the latter said word order was determined by meaning. The former is based on a context-free metaphysical and structural logic, the latter a postmetaphysical and embodied-enacted logic. The former is the sort of logic used by the model of hierarchical complexity, the latter is the sort of logic used by the dynamic systems theorists. Each has their own version of hierarchical complexity and hence mereological levels of development. And it's not a matter of balancing the two in some higher dialectical level, as that in itself is part and parcel of the metaphysical system. It is though a matter of which is a better or 'integral' interpretation, which in turn determines how one describes levels of development generally. The real/false reason thread (among others) goes into the voluminous details.

Ginsburg's dissent in the Hobby Lobby case

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was pissed, to say the least, on the regressive Court majority decision in this case. See this article for commentary and a link to the dissent. She said it opens the door for any other similar closely-held corporation to deny any variety of health services on their insurance plans due to its religious beliefs. Plus there is no justification that allowing such services on its insurance plan forces Hobby Lobby or any of their employees to use that contraception. Those that choose not to don't have to, so it places no burden on their religious beliefs. And there is a larger, compelling societal and public health interest in allowing those that want it to get those services, which is now being denied.

Grammatical developmental assumptions

Continuing from the last post, also recall this post and a few following. It questions the very notion of developmental levels and/or how they are articulated. And which are likely and significantly influenced by the language/grammar used with its inherent assumptions, undergirded by the Real infrastructure of communication-energy systems. Just something to consider when exploring the developmental level of philosophies. From the linked posts:

Kennilingus and the model of hierarchical complexity (MHC) assume a teleology. For the Lingam it is a morphogenetic gradient from involution that pulls evolution up toward it, like a strange attractor. For the MHC it is both Platonic ideal forms and Aristotelian universal categories. Both require that the lower be subsumed in the higher, and both assume that this higher is the real goal to which evolution is moving. Both require essences.

Integral grammar

We have an IPS discussion on Balder's paper "Sophia Speaks." He discusses some ideas on expanding that paper in this post. Below is one of my thread responses on some other ideas in this regard:

Grammar is defined as the rules for how sentences are structured in a language, i.e., syntax and morphology. So in addition to the parts of language (noun, verb etc.) grammar is also about how the parts of speech relate to each other. It seems that it is in how grammars are constructed in the various languages and dialects where we get more general overall worldview approaches from which the various philosophies arise. E.g., English grammar is generally constructed in the noun-verb-object syntax, and this to a large extent determines how one will translate the world. Chinese grammar, while having the noun-verb-object syntax, nevertheless places modifiers in front of the head noun more like languages the have a noun-object-verb structure (e.g. Japanese). (See linguistic typology for how various languages determine word order.)

Also Chinese does not have the strict separation between words as does English. French grammar, like other Romance languages, inflects words with number, gender, case mood, tense, voice. All of these differences determine how we structure our worldview philosophies.

kennilingus

I coined the term kennilingus in reference to Ken Wilber's work as explained here. Layman Pascal has a glossary in which my term has an entry here.