Theory and Therapy of Representations

[Jon Awbrey]

Theory and Therapy of Representations • 1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/02/21/theory-and-therapy-of-representations-1-b/

❝Again, in a ship, if a man were at liberty to do what he chose,
but were devoid of mind and excellence in navigation (αρετης
κυβερνητικης), do you perceive what must happen to him and
his fellow sailors?❞

─ Plato • Alcibiades 135 A

Statistics were originally the data a ship of state needed for stationkeeping
and staying on course. The Founders of the United States, like the Cybernauts
of the Enlightenment they were, engineered a ship of state with checks and
balances and error‑controlled feedbacks for the sake of representing both
reality and the will of the people. In that connection Max Weber saw how
a state's accounting systems are intended as representations of realities
its crew and passengers must observe or perish.

The question for our time is —

• What are the forces distorting our representations of
what's observed, what's expected, and what's intended?

Repercussions ─

The Place Where Three Wars Meet
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2012/06/21/the-place-where-three-wars-meet/

Regards,

Jon

cc: https://mathstodon.xyz/@Inquiry/114042549214137021
cc: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Theory_and_Therapy_of_Representations

[Jon Awbrey]

Theory and Therapy of Representations • 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/02/22/theory-and-therapy-of-representations-2-b/

In a complex society, people making decisions and taking actions
at places remote from you have the power to affect your life in
significant ways. Those people govern your life, they are your
government, no matter what spheres of influence they inhabit,
private or public. The only way you get a choice in that
governance is if there are paths of feedback permitting you
to affect the life of those decision makers and action takers
in significant ways. That is what accountability, response-
ability, and representative government are all about.

Naturally, some people are against that.

In the United States there has been a concerted campaign for as long
as I can remember — but even more concerted since the Reagan Regime —
to get the People to abdicate their hold on The Powers That Be and
just let some anonymous corporate entity send us the bill after the
fact. They keep trying to con the People into thinking they can
starve the beast, to limit government, when what they are really
doing is feeding the beast of corporate control, weakening their
own power over the forces that govern their lives.

That is the road to perdition as far as responsible government goes.
There is not much of anything one leader or one administration can do
unsupported if the People do not constantly demand a government of, by,
and for the People.

Resource ─

Survey of Cybernetics
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/01/25/survey-of-cybernetics-4/

[Jon Awbrey]

Theory and Therapy of Representations • 3
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/02/23/theory-and-therapy-of-representations-3-b/

Representation is a concept we find at the intersection of cybernetics,
epistemology, logic, mathematics, psychology, and sociology. In my studies
it led me from math to psych and back again, with sidelong glances at the
history of democratic governance. Its time come round again, I find myself
returning to the scenes of two recurring questions.

Scene 1. Pragmatic Truth • Discussion 18
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2019/11/14/pragmatic-truth-discussion-18/

We do not live in axiom systems. We do not live encased in languages,
formal or natural. There is no reason to think we will ever have exact
and exhaustive theories of what's out there, and the truth, as we know,
is “out there”. Peirce understood there are more truths in mathematics
than are dreamt of in logic — and Gödel’s realism should have put the
last nail in the coffin of logicism — but some ways of thinking just
never get a clue.

That brings us to Question 1 —

• What are formalisms and all their embodiments
in brains and computers good for?

Scene 2. Theory and Therapy of Representations • 1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/02/21/theory-and-therapy-of-representations-1-b/

Statistics were originally the data a ship of state needed for stationkeeping and
staying on course. The Founders of the United States, like the Cybernauts of the
Enlightenment they were, engineered a ship of state with checks and balances and

error-controlled feedbacks for the sake of representing both reality and the will

of the people. In that connection Max Weber saw how a state's accounting systems
are intended as representations of realities its crew and passengers must observe
or perish.

That brings us to Question 2 —

• What are the forces distorting our representations of
what's observed, what's expected, and what's intended?

Resources ─

Survey of Cybernetics
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/01/25/survey-of-cybernetics-4/

Pragmatic Theory Of Truth
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Pragmatic_Theory_Of_Truth

Regards,

Jon

[Jon Awbrey]

Theory and Therapy of Representations • 4
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/02/24/theory-and-therapy-of-representations-4-b/

Re: Ontolog Forum • Paola Di Maio
• https://groups.google.com/g/ontolog-forum/c/Ek_7cCCyFkQ/m/qI0kQv4UAgAJ

JA: What are the forces distorting our representations of

what's observed, what's expected, and what's intended?

PDM: The short answer is — the force behind all distortions
is our own unenlightened mind, and all the shortfalls
this comes with.

I think that's true, we have to keep reflecting on the state of
our personal enlightenments. If we can do that without losing
our heads and our systems thinking caps, there will be much
we can do to promote the general Enlightenment of the State.

On both personal and general grounds we have a stake in the projects of
self‑governing systems — whether it is possible for them to exist and
what it takes for them to thrive in given environments. Systems on
that order have of course been studied from many points of view and
at many levels of organization. Whether we address them under the
names of adaptive, cybernetic, error-correcting, intelligent, or
optimal control systems they all must be capable to some degree
of learning, reasoning, and self‑guidance.

Resources —

Survey of Cybernetics
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/01/25/survey-of-cybernetics-4/

Survey of Differential Logic
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/02/25/survey-of-differential-logic-7/

Survey of Inquiry Driven Systems
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2024/02/28/survey-of-inquiry-driven-systems-6/

Regards,

Jon

[Jon Awbrey]

Theory and Therapy of Representations • 5
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2025/02/25/theory-and-therapy-of-representations-5-b/

Re: R.J. Lipton and K.W. Regan • Legal Complexity
• https://rjlipton.com/2022/09/04/legal-complexity/

❝I do not pretend to understand the moral universe;
the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways;
I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by
the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience.
And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.❞

🙞 Theodore Parker
• https://web.archive.org/web/20200302045624/https://books.google.com/books?id=eHgYAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA48#v=onepage&q&f=false

The arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice — there's hope it will.
For the logic of laws to converge on justice may take some doing on our part.