Jeff Grupp, asvamika svatva & imprimitivity

Imprimitivity means 'intensionality'- i.e replacing Tarskian 'primitives' which are undefined with stuff which is defined, and has a 'logical' internal structure, for a particular purpose. But, the domain of imprimitivity is a 'block'. Structures which we impute for some useful purpose don't actually subsist in what we are looking at. They may be wholly 'ontologically dysphoric, or not at home in this world.

 But even if what we look at is a 'block'- because we have no means to 'carve up reality along its joints' or, as St. Paul says, 'rightly divide the word of Truth'-  what we look at aint a 'blob' which encompasses us though, no doubt, antagonomic cunts will say stuff like 'you are what you eat and you are what you think and you are what you do and you don't speak language, language speaks you' and so on and so forth. 

An 'asvamika svatva' is something which is property but which is vested in no owner. This does not mean nothing can be done with it. It is just that the 'Hohfedian incidents' associated with it are different, perhaps more restricted, than those associated with a property which has an identifiable 'owner'. 

Jeff Grupp- a 'Buddhist' philosopher now doing useful Christian stuff as a Pastor ministering to guys in jail- wrote an entertaining paper some 15 years ago, advocating 'blob theory'-  i.e. the notion that reality is radically unstructured- 'a pathless land' in the language of Jeddu Krishnamurthy. 

I argue that problems to do with the theories of property possession lead to blob theory.

Is that a property which 'theories of property possession' have?  If so, blob theory is merely providing a service to a property such that it can endure. The fact that I own some shares in such and such company and that to maintain this ownership certain services have to be provided by Company Secretaries and Stock Brokers and so forth and, moreover, that some theory of Law and Economics must prevail for this to happen, does not alter the fact that I own x numbers of shares in y Company. One may say Capitalism is a blob or that Society is a blob or Humanity or Sentience or the Multiverse is a blob, but the fact remains that I, not some blob, own certain specific shares. 

As I will discuss later... a property must be a property of something.

No. It may be unvested. In the Mahabharata, a Gandharva gives Arjuna the boon of chakuci vidya which however Arjuna does not accept. But the Gandharva does not take it back either. It remains unvested or 'aswamika' till Arjuna suffers vishada (depression) and becomes 'alien to himself' or 'no longer the master of himself'- i.e. he is no longer his own 'swami'. At this time, it seems to me, the unvested boon of clairvoyance does vest in him and so he foresees the horrific outcome of the Kurukshetra war. Interestingly, the Bhagvad Gita shows Arjuna as wishing to accept 'Yogishvara' (Lord Krishna) as his true Swami. The result is that he gets a theophanic vision optimal for his deontic preferences. But this was precisely what the Gandharva's boon would have invested him with anyway! In other words, by not accepting property, he got it anyway as the gratuitous gift of his own self-chosen 'ishtadeva' Lord. 

More generally, the law has never had any problem with unvested property. A thing can be owned though no owner can be identified. The sword Excalibur is an example. But, for legal purposes, a trust could, in medieval England, have been created for the benefit of a 'son by a barren woman' or several named matrons of the parish long past breeding age. 

There cannot be properties that are not possessed by something that they are properties of, for if there were, they would be properties that are not properties of anything (they would be properties that are not properties).

This is not the case. They could be properties of entities whose existence is contingent on incompossible events.  The question is, could they serve a useful purpose? The answer, for the Law, is sure. But this is also true of intuitionistic Mathematics and, it may be, such things necessarily crop up elsewhere. 

That is how I come to the conclusion that properties do not exist, for the following reasons. If it could be argued that there are no currently available coherent theories of property possession, then the best account of reality we have is one where particulars do not have properties.

Nonsense! The best account of reality we have is 'it's complicated, dude. Don't sweat it. Do something useful.'  

If that is the case, then if there are any properties, they can only be properties that are not properties of any particular.

No. If we speak of 'properties' then those properties could exist though only belonging to what we believe to be entities contingent on incompossible events.  The best account or Reality we can have is the one most useful to us. It will feature Structural Causal Models which have properties with the above feature. Consider notions like 'naturality', 'non-arbitrariness', canonicity, efficiency, optimization etc. The adjoint functors associated with them are useful though, it may be, incompossible because their actual calculation is in a higher time class. So what? Verification may be polynomial. In any case, if the thing solves a coordination problem then why get your knickers in a twist over ontology? 

But if there cannot be any such properties, as just mentioned, and as will be argued below, then there cannot be any properties whatsoever. Therefore, by focusing on problems to do with property possession, I am able to come to the conclusion that properties do not exist.

In which case the conclusion this dude came to can't have the property he claims for it. This is a classic self-defeating argument. 

Grupp's motivation, however, is worthy of respect. He says 'blob theory may be of utmost interest since it may be supported by theories of philosophic atomism.'

If we say 'block universe'- rather than 'blob theory'- this is certainly true. Atomism, soteriologically speaking, has been about seeking a finer granularity where dynamics disappear. There is an illusion of having gone outside Time. We are reconciled to ageing and fucking up our relationships and dying unhonoured and unsung. 

Grupp invokes Quantum theory- who, back then, didn't? 

Greene, a leading quantum gravity theorist, tells us about noncommutative geometry,

a project which hopes to exploit duality or adjointness between specific optimization problems on directed graphs (or other Time's arrow bound formalisms) and geometric notions essentially to reassert ergodicity over the hysteresis of what may be co-evolved processes. In other words, the motivation is 'economic' or for the purpose of better 'epistemological management'. But this has nothing to do with actual ontology. It is an artefact of the theory which, if it can't 'pay for itself', will be abandoned anyway. Sheldon on Big Bang Theory was only tolerable because we thought 'String theory' might be useless shite. 

I don't know what the response to Grupp's paper was back in 2006. But, my memory is that 'imprimitivity'- i.e. George Mackey's work- and the notion of 'cosets' and 'induced representation- was seen as foundational. Thus, it was ridiculous to appeal to non-commutative geometry to argue for a structureless reality. The maths was going in the opposite direction. It was adding structure. On the other hand, Grothendieck seemed to have gone off the deep-end re. some psedo- Buddhist shite. Maybe that's what Grupp was getting at. 

the mathematics that in the future might be found to describe the smallest level of reality that physicists study: «On scales as small as the Planck length a new kind of geometry must emerge, one that aligns with the new physics of string theory. This new geometrical framework is called quantum geometry.»Foot note 10_39 Greene continues:

...[R]esearch on aspects of M-theory... has shown that something known as a zero-brane -- possibly the most fundamental ingredient of M-theory, an object that behaves somewhat like a point particle at large distances but has drastically different properties at short ones -- may give us a glimpse of the spaceless and timeless realm... [W]hereas strings show us that conventional notions of space cease to have relevance below the Planck scale, the zero-branes give essentially the same conclusion but also provide a tiny window on the new unconventional framework that takes over. Studies with these branes indicate that ordinary geometry is replaced by something known as noncommutative geometry... In this geometrical framework, the conventional notions of space and of distance between points melt away, leaving us in a vastly different conceptual landscape.Foot note 10_40

Interestingly, Grupp now quotes this in a paper titled ' The Implantation Argument: Simulation Theory is Proof that God Exists'. This is certainly compatible with Grothendieck's own oneiric 'Yoga's' trajectory or, indeed, Iyer Advaita. But, 'implantation' can only arises if duality, imprimitivity, induced representation etc, etc, are useful or otherwise have salience. But, if that is the case, then 'implantation' must always be error-prone, inexact, or 'noise', not 'signal'. Why? Coevolved processes need volatility to have a representation as a configuration space.

Consider Brian Greene's appearance on 'Big Bang Theory'. The episode was titled the 'Herb garden germination' and concerned 'rumours' or 'memes'. Here, the dynamics of something soteriologically good and profound- Leonard proposing to Bernadette and getting properly hitched- is set against a backdrop of 'implanted' noise and volatility which, however, highlights the precise reason 'holy matrimony' is indeed a sacrament.

Greene is my age. He is smart- sho' nuff- and, let's face it, writes better English, more poetic prose, than a stupid socioproctologist like myself could dream of doing. But, for lesser beings like me, he points the way to being an asshole, not pointing, as socioproctologists ought to do, a finger at those shitting on philosophy or econ or whatever.

Grupp escapes my censure. It is the 'woke' or 'careerist' cretins who fucked up Philosophy. Grupp was and is excited by ideas and has a deep- wholly unmercenary- motivation of...dunno... mebbe a soteriological sort. Thus, the dude aint an asshole and ought not figure on this blog. 

Still, for 'Poetry as Socioproctology' I highlight Grupp's misology re. aswamika svattva (ownerless properties) because it shows how 'vulgar' Buddhism could fail to properly receive the Bhagvad Gita. However, there is no evidence that anything of the sort actually happened back then. 

As for blobs- I increasingly look like a big fat lump of brown stuff- i.e shit. That's cool. It is what I am. Happy birthday to me. I'm now 59.