Memorability: "comprehension tables" as complement to "truth tables"

Comprehension of Requisite Variety via Rotation of the Complex Plane (Part #6)

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Comprehension? Given this subtle complexity, there is great irony to the fact the governance of society depends formally on the binary distinction between "true-or-false", or "guilty-or-not guilty". A rare exception with respect to the latter is the "not proven" of Scottish law, and the cultivated evanescent nature of fake news and its deniability (Varieties of Fake News and Misrepresentation: when are deception, pretence and cover-up acceptable? 2019; Deniable responsibility for any ultimate crime against humanity? 2019). The emergence of a "post-truth" society, characterized by post-truth politics, even suggests the need for a post-truth adaptation of truth tables (Towards articulation of a "post-truth table"? 2016)

Curiously missing from any discussion of an "eightfold way", or of the subtle intricacies of "truth tables", is the challenge they may imply to comprehension. It is as though the simple presentation of such patterns is naively assumed to trigger comprehension of the knowledge implied -- as with declarations regarding the threat of global warming and other crises. Whereas the focus of truth tables is on the "shades of grey" in the relation between "true" and "false", their presentation is seemingly to be recognized as constituting a simple binary distinction between "knowledge" and "ignorance". The reality that any "eightfold way" (as encoded by such tables) may be meaningless (or incomprehensible) is not a consideration.

Focus has been widely placed on the Biblical quote: And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free (John 8:32). Unfortunately, "truth" will not make people free unless it is comprehensible -- otherwise incomprehension will be conflated in practice with "false" and "wrong".

From that perspective, exposure to any pattern of knowledge supposedly invites a learning process in which people may engage -- or should be encouraged to do so. Failure to do so may then invite a degree of condemnation as an indication of deliberately "wallowing" in ignorance -- as with massive loss of biodiversity. Since the focus of this argument is on the coherent comprehension of complexity, it is then appropriate to explore the sense in which any articulation of a truth table might be more fruitfully understood in terms of a "comprehension table".

Memorability? The argument is all the stronger when "memorability" is associated with comprehension. There is always the possibility that a new pattern of knowledge may be only briefly understood after explanation -- and then forgotten. Of potentially greater concern in an aging society, with aging decision-makers, is the manner in which a previously known pattern may be gradually forgotten or incompletely remembered -- however it was recognized in the first place.

How is account to be taken of the experience of an expert on propositional logic when gradually affected by Alzheimer syndrome? Knowledge may well be effectively "lost", especially collectively, as can be variously discussed (Societal Learning and the Erosion of Collective Memory -- a critique of the Club of Rome Report: No Limits to Learning, 1980).

That critique argued the point through the description offered by Doris Lessing of the fictional encounter of a "galactic development officer" with the representative of a "developing planet":

To say that he understood what went on was true. To say that he did not understand -- was true. I would sit and explain, over and over again. He listened, his eyes fixed on my face, his lips moving as he repeated to himself what I was saying. He would nod: yes, he had grasped it. But a few minutes later, when I might be saying something of the same kind, he was uncomfortable, threatened. Why was I saying that? and that? his troubled eyes asked of my face: What did I mean? His questions at such moments were as if I had never taught him anything at all. He was like one drugged or in shock. Yet it seemed that he did absorb information for sometimes he would talk as if from a basis of shared knowledge: it was as if a part of him knew and remembered all I told him, but other parts had not heard a word. I have never before or since had so strongly that experience of being with a person and knowing that all the time there was certainly a part of that person in contact with you, something real and alive and listening -- and yet most of the time what one said did not reach that silent and invisible being, and what he said was not often said by the real part of him. It was as if someone stood there bound and gagged while an inferior impersonator spoke for him. (Re: Colonised Planet 5 - Shikasta, 1979, pp. 56-57).

The issue is potentially relevant to the set of 17 Sustainable Development Goals. What proportion of those promoting them would be capable of remembering all of them? What of those who have only vaguely heard of them -- or have never heard of them? What is the role of memory aids in mitigating between forgotten knowledge and its remembrance through a "reminder"?

The tetralemma, notably in the light of its importance in Asian logic, could then be adapted -- or be recognized as implying:

Ignorance vs. Comprehension? Adapting any approach to truth tables could then give simpler patterns of the following kind. The pattern below left acquired considerable publicity through being cited in poetic form by Donald Rumsfeld as US Secretary of Defense (There are Known Knowns, 2002; The Unknown Known, 2013).

As with the extensive literature on the nature of truth, the question of what is knowledge is clearly a matter of continuing reflection -- despite the clarity supposedly offered by propositional logic. The same can be said of ignorance -- too readily understood in terms of a lack of knowledge or information, given the challenge of comprehension. This is variously acknowledged (Gerd Gigerenzer and Rocio Garcia-Retamero, Cassandra's Regret: The Psychology of Not Wanting to Know, Psychological Review, 124, 2017, 2; Lee McIntyre, The Attack on Truth: we have entered an age of willful ignorance.The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 June 2015). Especially insightful in this regard are the work of Nicholas Rescher (Ignorance: On the Wider Implications of Deficient Knowledge, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009; Unknowability, Lexington Books, 2009). What recognition is to be given to the widely cited pejorative judgement of science with regard to a theory being Not Even Wrong?

It is curious to note that ignorance is not a valid plea before the law (Ignorantia juris non excusat). However it is also appropriate to note the extent to which "forgetting" plays a role in legal proceedings, potentially ensuring impunity. Such considerations cannot be readily set aside, despite the purported inconvenience of the truth of climate change (An Inconvenient Truth -- about any inconvenient truth, 2008). Arguably the leakage of US diplomatic cables via Wikileaks offered a form of knowledge, where public ignorance had previously been ensured.

In a period of global crisis, with the threat of World War III and various forms of collapse, it is useful to recall the effect of one weapon which may be used -- EMP (nuclear electromagnetic pulse) -- which can have the capacity to erase electronic memory and any associated cultural heritage. Seemingly less violent, but with similar consequences, are the increasing effects of cyberwarfare and dissemination of malware -- ensuring permanent individual and collective memory loss.

Semantic compactification? The argument with regard to true-false, knowledge-ignorance, memorability-forgettability and innocence-guilt could be taken further. If indeed there is a remarkable tendency to simplistic semantic conflation in binary terms, especially in discourse with strategic implications, could understanding of it be fruitfully informed by the understanding of physics of compactification? In string theory this endeavours to reconcile the gap between the conception of the universe based on its four observable dimensions with the ten, eleven, or twenty-six dimensions which theoretical equations suggest the universe is composed. There is a degree of irony to the choice by physics of the "string" metaphor when discourse, especially that enabled by the internet, makes extensive use of the "thread" metaphor and the challenges it poses (Interweaving Thematic Threads and Learning Pathways, 2010; Weaving together the threads: warp and weft, 2002)

In the physics of compactification, some of the extra dimensions are assumed to "close up" on themselves to form circles -- to be "curled up" in some way. At the limit where these curled up dimensions become very small, spacetime can then be treated as being effectively of a lower number of dimensions. Compactification may then be understood in terms of a form of "dimensional reduction" which would seem to be only too apparent in the recourse to binary argumentaion.

Towards recognizing an array of "dimensions": Many unresolved strategic challenges then lend themselves to exploration as being variously conflated in the associated discourse:

Whether understood as "conflation" or "confusion", the implication merits consideration in terms of the cognitive process associated with "con" (Prefix "Re-cognition" as Prelude to Fixing Sustainability -- "Pro" vs "Con" ? Speculative review of missing emphases potentially vital for psychosocial balance, 2017; Considerable Conglomeration of "Cons" of Global Concern: eightfold constraint on constructive conflict control? 2010; Exploration of Prefixes of Global Discourse: implications for sustainable confidelity, 2011).

This would then suggest that such "value polarities" could be decomposed in terms of "tables", then to be understood in more general terms as "value tables" (rather than limited to "truth tables"). Of some relevance is an earlier systematic approach to the identification of an extensive set of value polarities through the Human Values Project, taking account of the ambiguities with which they may be associated (in English). These were clustered experimentally into a 5x9 table of value types. Provocatively it might then be asked whether "value theory" (axiology) could require "ten, eleven, or twenty-six dimensions" -- to conform to an analogue to the M-theory unifying all consistent versions of superstring theory. Clearly the complex condition of society suggests that some such number of "extra dimensions" is required, if it is appropriate to assume that the psychosocial system is at least as complex as the physical system -- if not more complex -- as it would appear to be.

The challenge is highlighted by the incredible capacity of science to enable travel to the limits of the solar system -- matched by the incredible incapacity to address effectively the complexities of a social system in crisis (Challenges More Difficult for Science than Going to Mars -- or exploring the origins of the Universe or of Life on Earth, 2014).

Arrogance vs Humility: Just as the comprehension dimension is missing from consideration of truth tables, fundamental to the complexity of dynamics between strategies and their advocates is the dramatic consequence of any association of arrogance with possession of truth. Such possession is subtly related to the widespread preoccupation with acquisition of intellectual property -- potentially to the point of holding to ransom a society in crisis (Future Coping Strategies: beyond the constraints of proprietary metaphors, 1992). How does exclusive possession of truth -- in the form of secrecy --condemn others to a condition of falsehood?

Whilst truth is a focus of considerable attention, the arrogance potentially associated with any assumption of its exclusive possession is a remarkably neglected focus of study -- despite widespread acknowledgement of its effects in practice. The arrogant scientist is as recognizable as the arrogant politician, ideologue or entrepreneur (Knowledge Processes Neglected by Science, 2012). How is the assertion of truth to be distinguished from the perception of arrogance? As yet to be clarified with respect to any compactification of dimensions are the dynamics framed by the following table, indicative of the self-reflexivity associated with higher orders of cybernetics.

Metaphorically framed, there is a curious sense in which arrogance can be compared to gravity, especially when truth is asserted with gravitas (Arrogance as an analogue to gravity -- equally fundamental and mysterious, 2015; Exertion of "gravitational" effects by a big lie? 2016), The articulation of conceptual models as forms of truth lends itself to exploration in such terms (Understanding models otherwise -- as centres of "gravity", 2015). Of related interest is the diminishing effect of such gravity with distance -- itself to be understood in communication terms, as suggested by proxemics (Local "force" vs Global "gravity"-- or the reverse? 2019). Rather than being "made free by truth", there is a sense in which the manner in which it is possessed can then be understood as a form of entrapment -- as with being trapped in a gravity well.

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