Changes

=====1.2.1.1.  Observation and Action=====

=====1.2.1.1.  Observation and Action=====

It seems clear that observations are a special type of action, and that actions are a special type of observable event.  At least, actions are events that may come to be observed, if only in the way that outcomes of eventual effects are recognized to confirm the hypotheses of specific causes.  Is every action in some sense an observation?  Is every observable event in some sense an observation, a commemoration, an event whose occasion serves to observe something else?  If this were so, then the concepts of observation and action would be special cases of each other.  Computer scientists will have no trouble accepting the mutual recursion of complex notions, so long as the conceptual instrument as a whole does its job, and so long as the recursion bottoms out somewhere.  The mutual definition can find its limit in two ways.  It can ground out centrally, with a single category of primitive element that has all the relevant aspects being analyzed, here both perception and action.  It can scatter peripherally, resolving into simple elements that distinctively belong to one category or another.

It seems clear that observations are a special type of action, and that actions  

are a special type of observable event.  At least, actions are events that may  

come to be observed, if only in the way that outcomes of eventual effects are  

recognized to confirm the hypotheses of specific causes.  Is every action in  

some sense an observation?  Is every observable event in some sense an  

observation, a commemoration, an event whose occasion serves to observe  

something else?  If this were so, then the concepts of observation and action  

would be special cases of each other.  Computer scientists will have no trouble  

accepting the mutual recursion of complex notions, so long as the conceptual  

instrument as a whole does its job, and so long as the recursion bottoms out  

somewhere.  The mutual definition can find its limit in two ways.  It can ground  

out centrally, with a single category of primitive element that has all the  

relevant aspects being analyzed, here both perception and action.  It can  

scatter peripherally, resolving into simple elements that distinctively belong  

to one category or another.

=====1.2.1.2.  Observation and Observables=====

=====1.2.1.2.  Observation and Observables=====