C-189. B-ness: riskier and riskier

Functionality is no passing interest. It is of concern for us with respect to Adapt, Adopt and Adept as strategic options. Some functionality such as planetary orbits around the sun we can Adapt to. Some functionality such as that possessed by this or that body and/or step we can Adopt. For some functionality, that which must be produced, we must be Adept – and become more Adept if we are not now Adept enough (and we are not: needed functionality/ functionality >1.).

Needed solutions – i.e., needed functionality, needed steps to be made so as to be taken – mount, in consequence of more step takers taking more steps (e.g., population increase, social media usage), in consequence of diminishing natural resources – i.e., discoverable and recoverable functionalities (e.g., of land, water and air; of plants, animals and minerals), and in consequence of the still incompletely and inaccurately Read behavioral problem, Pbeh, and behavioral solution, Sbeh.

Traces of found functionalities pepper human history, of edible fruits and vegetables, of edible animals, of potable liquids, of sharp rock fragments, of caves, of flammable substances … of human capacities. In all these cases, the functionality resides in this or that body (or condition conceived of as a body, or body within a body: a property). The B-ness of “behavioral entity” (BE) captures our attention.

More functionality can be found in particular steps already taken, by ourselves and/or other step takers (not just humans). We can Adopt these, as best we can. The learning curve may be twisted, not just long. These steps comprise quite a Muddle, varying in molecular specification.

But what if found functionality does not suffice for our needs? Well, we have developed another source for needed functionality: manufactured bodies. This if and when we have Grasped needed functionality well enough to come up with the step(s) that manufacturing requires us to make and take (“invention”), along with the wanted functionality in the manufactured BE product. Think Technology … technologies of procedures and not just of tools.

Needed solutions, steps we need to make and take, remain. (See O: Quality of life.) Technology probes needed functionality here and there, such as we see in contemporary vectors of distributional hardware and software (e.g., the Internet sector) … so that whatever we can do now can be done more expeditiously (e.g., information transmission) – and, for some, more profitably.

Found functionality has not done enough of the job. Its extension to manufactured functionality, however, points TO the possibility of further functionality to be had in consequence of human functionality … in consequence of developed step making and taking capability, not just of developed capacity, re needed functionality.

However, B-ness gets in the way of progress, of our going forward via solutions. We have to know more about steps, especially how they might and ought to be made, than we can obtain from any amount of the many and various steps taken by this or that BE, past or present, more or less molecularly specified … and/or, importantly, any number of their outcomes. Our future here AT and ON the Frontier, to enable the needed Adept strategy to work, requires us to look forward in this World of Possibility, to the Nature of Things, to its attendant conditions (general persisting conditions) and principles (requisites and imperatives) … not just backward, via B-ness, to the things of nature ... as we seek to extend functionality in the service of the human condition.

Thus we need to supplement “to know” experiments that confirm found functionality (aka proofs) – i.e., KF -- with “to know” experiments that make a try at providing functionality (coarsely: “trial and error”), KT. The latter looks forward re needed functionality – per se and in particular; the former looks backward at particular functionalities.

KT makes use of steps made and taken, of what should be seen as molecular steps, as material in their functionality as those of alloyed metals or other B-ness “materials science” products. What should be seen as Adept’s “structures of process.” When we register what Adept’s Compose (an R-word) can make of things, of steps as well as bodies, of steps together with bodies, we can improve on KT. The R-transform enables us to introduce, in effect, a (meta-) technology for step making and taking technologies. Such that our tries -- our solutions, our steps -- are enriched in their making. Such that innovation does not have to depend on agent and/or outcome to advance.

KT becomes KMmt. (Where a try’s step taking, t, is preceded by a step making, m, and that preceded by what the R-transform makes of things in and by its Reads, M, of the Expansion.) Our Grasp < CEM > Involve, the essence of step making and taking, becomes stronger … and our Know (an R-word), before and after the fact, firmer. “Try” (an R-word) is no longer just a particular, more or less articulated, step taken, weakly Grasped by B-ness protocols of behavior and language.

If try we must – and indeed we must, then we cannot allow the B-ness relegation of functionality, of step making and taking, to the limiting status of this or that property of a body and/or the relationship of this body to that body. We cannot settle for a life of Adapt and/or Adopt. We must do more for needed functionality, for solutions.

We also need Adept to effect a metastrategy for composing the best arrange of Adapt, Adopt and Adept.

We can opt to follow, in the wake of this or that agency. We can opt to engage ourselves in decision making among available solutions – if availability is not voided by market demands on our financial status. But why stop here? If we look into the challenge of Solve (an R-word), we may find additional functionality resources.

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Where is the needed Solve technology? Look back to the unsolved problems that place a ceiling on our quality of life: O:Sp (incomplete solutions, such as those still plagued by distribution problems); O:Ps (dysfunctional solutions, such as those containing bugs); O:P (no solutions available, such as in lack of collective capability); O:S-P (inadequate Solve methods, such as B-ness ).

Consider then: Pbeh, Psit … Sbeh =>Ssit. Two problems, behavioral and situational; two solutions, behavioral and situational. Pbeh is talking about needed functionality (NF) in consequence of the Nature of things, functionality that we have come nowhere near attaining. And Sbeh is talking about the step’s general form of Involve < CEM > Grasp, the HOW of Compose (see Adept), with < CEM > serving to strengthen Mind, Move and their working together in and for the step.

Sbeh and O:S-P [which has much to do with the generating the other three problem types] make the same point: We need a stronger Solve, a more developed Involve < CEM > Grasp. To establish that a solution needs to deal with making – not just taking – a step. Gratuitous combinations with fortuitous functionality, after unarranged collisions, notwithstanding. B-ness does not serve us all that well.)

“Problematic situation” collapses what is talked about to Psit => Ssit. “Situation,” however, is classic B-ness (objectification) re our focus of attention. This thingk is posited to serve as the Involve, just as “Universe” does, to Grasp other things – and thingks: focal bodies and body-body relationships via cognition’s inside-outside relation. And “problem definition” is never just situational.

If all we know about Solve derives from past particular solutions, even those solutions carefully designed, we are not seeing Solve completely and accurately. We don’t see all that well backwards through the step(s) taken, to the foundations for and the making and taking of functionality needed, its development and its exercise.

We may settle for Sbeh only as B-ness protocols have embedded it in Ssit’s by the B-transform Read of the Expansion. Where we have a Muddle, not a molecular Grasp, of particular steps taken. What we can learn from histories is about steps taken that can (if well learned) be taken again. We need to know more about History … so that we can change histories for the better by making new solutions.

We can discern only some things from this Muddle of steps taken. We can sort them (e.g., good and/or bad outcomes; see C-188). But what do we know about step making and taking, before the fact here ON and AT the Frontier, about Step as functionality, given the needed functionality, NF, dictated by the Nature of Things’ partial order, consequentiality and discontinuity … and persistently evident in collisions? This general needed functionality, not the particular needed functionalities of “situations” (nf’s). All of what is called for (WICF). What solutions are talking about (WITA), what solutions also need to be talking about (WTITBTA) … and what is said about (WISA) -- weakly. (SeeC-190, 192.)

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Because we employ the B-transform technology (B-ness) in both what and how we endeavor to Mind, we are at risk in both regards. We peer B-nessly in the wrong direction (i.e., away from the Expansion [“Big step”]) toward bodies [from atomic particles to a putative “universe”]). We see Expansion’s little steps (our’s, that is) through the flawed glass of body property and/or body-body relationship. We risk both incompleteness and inaccuracy. We violate the precept of “all the truth and nothing but the truth.”

We need the R-transform to Read the Expansion and our expansions. Let’s get the static out of WICF. We are not able to mind “the whole truth.” B-ness protocols block WTITBTA. They restrict knowable materiality to the functionality of only found objects (KF), to the detriment of realizable materiality, of composable steps (i.e., solutions), to what is called for (WICF) – i.e., to the detriment of needed functionality that requires knowing thyself know: KMmt : KMmt.

B-ness is too much the sound of one hand clapping. A sin of omission and not just of commission – although behavioral concepts in WISA are a glaring and widespread example of the latter, producing a massive and territorial quagmire of what is said (See thoughtknots. C-190), of behaviors after the fact only if and as attached as body properties or as the relationship connecting one body with another. In neglect of behavior not yet thus anchored, of behavior yet to be. For want of development in accord with the Nature of Things … of failing to realize the drive forward of CEM B&F, available via the R-transform and R-protocols … of forfeiting dynamics of interdependence that could advance problem-solving materiality, the consequentiality, of step and body together in emergent “< CEM >”.

And then there is the third truth: the Excalibur truth, that our effort (the work of step making and taking) be tempered in accord with the Nature of Things. That truth which says that the Expansion is real (that the “universe” is our flawed B-transform in action), that the Expansion needs to be minded by the R-transform (too), whose R-protocol of an R-sense provides a tempering, developmental Excalibur way forward.

A time for all truths: for G-truths, not just the p-truths of B-ness protocols.


In light of the very useful Search feature now available in the home page, parenthetical back references are suspended for Comments as of C-184.


(c) 2018 R. F. Carter
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