from the Translators' Preface, of Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu. Translated by Stephen Addis and Stanley Lombardo, Hackett Publishing Company, 1993.

FALSE-FRIENDS emerge either by chance or semantically. Chance FALSE-FRIENDS are elements of LANGUAGES that seem the same or similar in two or more LANGUAGES but have different meanings. Semantic FALSE-FRIENDS have meanings that have diverged as their CULTURES have grown apart, over time and distance, or through war and occupation.

Semantic FALSE-FRIENDS can then either be 'full' — elements in two or more LANGUAGES whose meanings diverge widely — or partial. Partial semantic false friends are those elements that have several senses, some of which coincide in two or more LANGUAGES while others do not.

Partial semantic FALSE-FRIENDS therefore, represent divergences of customs, habits, and beliefs between CULTURES. A higher order of these then mistakes concepts in one culture as being the same as, or equivalent to, one or more concepts in another culture. Miscomprehensions arising from these CULTURAL FALSE-FRIENDS carry the greatest risk of significant, snowballing impacts.

Douglas Adams, in the science fiction comedy novel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, wrote satirically of an interstellar war caused by partial semantic FALSE-FRIENDS.

An example of the real world impacts when the miscomprehensions CULTURAL FALSE-FRIENDS can lead to are not addressed, is provided by the implementation of The Withdrawal Agreement, between European Union Member States and the United Kingdom, setting out the procedures for the UK's withdrawal from the European Union.

Large Language Models too, such as Google Translate, provide examples of CULTURAL FALSE-FRIENDSs, embedding and reinforcing them, and papering over the 'structural' misunderstandings readily arising between cultures.

Large Language Models (LLMs) map the relationships that words, and other SIGNS, have to one another. Drawn from the frequencies of the one-to-many relationships of SIGNS as they occur in extremely large bodies of 'text', for instance those openly available online, they calculate the probability of one sequence of SIGNS occurring after or with another.

By matching human translations of languages, for instance those of the proceedings of the European Parliament, the statistical relationships of the SIGNS in each language can then be compared and matched, and 'machine-translations' produced. These are very useful; however, they cannot discern CULTURAL FALSE-FRIENDS.

Statistical comparisons and their encodings, whether directed or produced blindly, generate translations of assumption, expectation and belief, concretizing inter-cultural misunderstandings, and masking, protecting, and enshrining prejudice. In subsuming individuality and the primacy of interpretation, LLMs have divorced LANGUAGE and CULTURE from their BIOSEMIOTIC root.

It is of course well know that careless talk costs lives but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated. For instance, a human named Arthur Dent.. once said, I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle. At the very moment he said this a freak wormhole opened in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far far back in time across almost infinite reaches of space to a distant galaxy where strange and warlike beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle. The two opposing leaders were meeting for the last time. A dreadful silence fell across the conference table as the commander of the Vl'Hurgs gazed levelly at the G'Gugvuntt leader squatting opposite, and, with a million sleak and horribly beweaponed star cruisers poised to unleash electric death at his single word of command, challenged the vile creature to take back what it had said about his mother. The creature stirred and at that very moment the words, I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle, drifted across the conference table. Unfortunately, in the VI'Hirg tongue this was the most dreadful insult imaginable, and there was nothing for it but to wage terrible war for centuries.

reasonablenrss

A key provision of the The Withdrawal Agreement was the process to be followed for notifying affected residents of the Agreement's impact on them personally, and to inform them of any steps they needed to follow to confirm the rights the Agreement safeguarded for them in their chosen country of residence.

This provision required signatories to take all reasonable steps to inform affected residents of the changes the Agreement brought, and of any country specific procedures individual residents would the need to follow. In the Finnish translation of the provision however, it was understood by the Finnish government only to require them to announce those changes through commonly used channels; and that the provision was then met simply by posting information on the Government's Facebook page and in Finnish newspapers. The Finnish government did not understand it to be a requirement to notify affected residents individually, for instance, by post or by copying them into the information it sent to its agencies to notify those agencies, but not those individuals, of the changes it had made to their status.

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the impact of the miscomprehension caused by this particular false-friend is reflected in the communication of the Vogons with the people of Earth that notified them of the planet's imminent demolition..

After, False friends: their origin and semantics in some selected languages, by Pedro J. Chamizo Dominguez, Brigitte Nerlich, 2002, in the Journal of Pragmatics 34 (2002) 1833-1849.

People of Earth, your attention, please. This is Prostetnic Vogon, Jeltz, of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council. As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system. And regrettably, your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you. ...There's no point in acting surprised about it! All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now. ... What do you mean you've never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven's sake, mankind, it's only four light years away. You know, I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that's your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams.

Fluency, is generally limited to describing dexterity of verbal expression; however FLUENCY here refers to EXPRESSION in general, and in particular to its aptness, in its environmental FRAME, for the communicative goals of the MEANING that informed it,.

MEANING, refers here to that which a BEING PERCEIVES of the EXPRESSIONS of NOUMENA. Developed and encoded through the FRAME of an individual's ONTOGENY, MEANING is inheritable.

Inherited and learnt by experience, PERCEPTION is the RECOGNITION by a BEING of MEANING in what their senses can register, that then is incorporated into MEANING.

virtuality refers to abstractions of actuality that then pre-process EXPERIENCE.

It is as correct or incorrect to say that hormones create love as it is to say that love creates hormones. Love is not definable in the way that hormones are; they are terms in different reference frames.

signification

Signs and symbols were written about by Aristotle and Plato — signs in the world of nature and symbols in human culture — symbols, such as numbers, letters, words etc, are now considered a type of sign, signifying through arbitrary conventions rather than through any direct relationship with what is signified.

The greek word, semio-, means a sign. The ending, -sis, of semio-sis, and BIOSEMIO-SIS, is equivalent in English to -ing, translating them literally then as sign-ing, sign-action, or signification. Anything, when RECOGNIZED, is then a SIGN of what is RECOGNIZED, and the process through which it is RECOGNIZED is BIOSEMIOSIS.

BIOSEMIOSIS is recursive. It enables BEINGS to generate MEANING by aligning their PERCEPTION of current SENSATION, with what they can RECOGNIZE from MEANING previously EMBODIED in them by themselves or through inheritance. ENDOSEMIOSIS and EXOSEMIOSIS then refer to EXPRESSIONS responding to the RECOGNITION of MEANING, ENDOSEMIOSIS to that in EMBODIED NOUMENA and EXOSEMIOSIS to that in external NOUMENA.

BIOSEMIOSIS is recursive. It enables BEINGS to generate MEANING by aligning their PERCEPTION of current SENSATION, with what they can RECOGNIZE from MEANING previously EMBODIED in them by themselves or through inheritance. ENDOSEMIOSIS and EXOSEMIOSIS then refer to EXPRESSIONS responding to the RECOGNITION of MEANING, ENDOSEMIOSIS to that in EMBODIED NOUMENA and EXOSEMIOSIS to that in external NOUMENA.

Noumenon, is a Greek word meaning "that which is perceived". It is the word Kant used to identify the thing-in-itself, the underlying reality that is then recognized by an observer as a SIGN.

NOUMENA may function as SIGNS of themselves — as rocks, or holes, or hands, etc.; as qualities these are associated with — food, green, danger, etc.; or as things distinct from themselves — a woman: a mother; a sound: a river, a phoneme or "Mum!"; a mark: a word, or a symbol, like pi, or a photograph or a drawing of a pie or a pipe.

Kant referred to recognition of the thing-in-itself as perception but, PERCEPTION, is used here to label one of the four processes in BIOSEMIOSIS that are bootstrapped by RECOGNITION

Painting by Rene Magritte, Ceci n'est pas une pipe., 1929.

The entire sequence of events involved in the development of an individual BEING over its lifespan.

...ontological (is) the best adverbial or adjectival derivative of being.. ...ontological security the basic existential position from which [a BEING] encounters all the hazards of life from a centrally firm place of their own and other's reality and identity.

...ontological (is) the best adverbial or adjectival derivative of being.. ..Ontological security.. is the basic existential position from which a person encounters all the hazards of life, social, ethical, spiritual, biological, from a centrally firm place of his own and other people's reality and identity.

If experience is denied, our awareness of what we are is restricted, we are estranged from our actualities. We are in a state of ontological insecurity, unable to take our being in the world for granted.

science

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.    Albert Einstein.

Science is an elementary practice. Scientism is a belief. Eugenics and the Holocaust it drove are among the brutal consequences and stark reminders of not recognizing this distinction.

Hormone, from the Greek, hormon, meaning 'that which sets in motion'.

from the Greek, akrasia, meaning 'loss of free will'; acrasins are signalling molecules, providing the function that hormones have, for instance, in humans.

context is king

A FRAME refers here to a frame of reference, a reference frame, or category. They are LANGUAGES, meta-LANGUAGES, that by contextualizing and defining the SIGNS that they contain and refer to, give them their meaning.

CULTURES are environmental FRAMES, meta-LANGUAGES that aggregate a community's PERCEPTION and EXPRESSION. Reflecting the wisdom, fears, and strategies that have been learned and passed on, their histories of families, communities, and peoples, are histories of privilege and trauma as varied, intransigent, and challenging to unravel as those of any individual are.

The differences between CULTURES provide opportunities for learning and development, but contextualizing and defining the LANGUAGES that evolve with them, and informing the interpretation of those that have not, they also construct semantic FALSE-FRIENDS.

..a structure of concepts, values, customs, or views by means of which an individual or group perceives or evaluates data, communicates ideas, and regulates behavior.

This definition of the term, frames of reference, taken from the Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary, aligns with the broader application of it here for FRAMES.

category mistakes

In the seventeenth century, Thomas Hobbes referred to the category errors that philosophers make. Three hundred years later, Gilbert Ryle coined the term category mistake, in The Concept Of Mind, illustrating it with several examples, one concerning a misunderstanding about universities.

A foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is shown a number of colleges, libraries, playing fields, museums, scientific departments and administrative offices. He then asks "But where is the University? I have seen where the members of the Colleges live, where the Registrar works, where the scientists experiment and the rest. But I have not yet seen the University in which reside and work the members of your University." It has then to be explained to him that the University is not another collateral institution, some ulterior counterpart to the colleges, laboratories and offices which he has seen. The University is just the way in which all that he has already seen is organized. When they are seen and when their co-ordination is understood, the University has been seen. His mistake lay in his innocent assumption that it was correct to speak of Christ Church, the Bodleian Library, the Ashmolean Museum and the University, to speak, that is, as if "the University" stood for an extra member of the class of which these other units are members. He was mistakenly allocating the University to the same category as that to which the other institutions belong.

The philosophical error had also been identified, by professor Heinrich Hertz, in respect of physics.

Our confused wish finds expression in the confused question as to the nature of force and electricity. But the answer which we want is not really an answer to this question. It is not by finding out more and fresh relations and connections that it can be answered; but by removing the contradictions existing between those already known, and thus perhaps by reducing their number. When these painful contradictions are removed, the question as to the nature of force will not have been answered; but our minds, no longer vexed, will cease to ask illegitimate questions.

from the poem The Stare's Nest by My Window, published in Meditations In Time Of Civil War (1922-23), by William Butler Yeats — on the Irish Civil War.

corporatism

the organization of a state on a corporative basis. — Collins English Dictionary.

the principles, doctrine, or system of corporative organization of a political unit, as a city or state. [1885-90] corporatist. — Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary.

the control of a state or organization by large interest groups; "individualism is in danger of being swamped by a kind of corporatism" — TFD Thesaurus, Based on WordNet 3.0, Farlex clipart collection.

corporative

of a state organized into and governed by corporations of individuals involved in any given profession, industry, etc. — Collins English Dictionary.

of or relating to a government or political system in which the principal economic functions, such as banking, industry, labor, and government, are organized as corporate entities. — American Heritage Dictionary.

of or pertaining to a political system under which the principal economic functions, as banking, industry, and labor, are organized as corporate entities. — Random House Kernerman Webster's College Dictionary.

The first Gilded Age, from the 1870s to 1890s, was named after Mark Twain's novel, The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, which satirized the excesses and societal problems which had arisen from the laissez-faire capitalism, political corruption, and wealth inequality of the times. A second Gilded Age, named then for its resemblance to the first, is considered to have begun between the 1980s and 2010s and to have continued to the present day.

The narrative of a second Gilded Age erroneously suggests that the current dynamics are repeating those of the late nineteenth century. (But) these are profoundly different historical moments. ... the "before" and "after" to a lengthy period when the cruelest characteristics of corporate capitalism were temporarily constrained. The late nineteenth century saw the ascent of serious efforts to rein in the power of the new capitalism and force it to bow down to the needs of civil society. During the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, we are experiencing the decline of that effort as capitalists and their ideological and political supporters push to see how far they can go to ensure the unchallenged hegemony of corporate and property rights. The slow climb toward a more humane capitalism and the rapid descent away from it constitute two very different experiences.

The nature of the differences between the first and second Gilded Ages, was also examined in 2015 by historian Steve Fraser.

What fueled the resistance to the first Gilded Age, [argues Fraser), was the fact that many Americans had a recent memory of a different kind of economic system, whether in America or back in Europe. Many at the forefront of the resistance were actively fighting to protect a way of life, whether it was the family farm that was being lost to predatory creditors or small-scale artisanal businesses being wiped out by industrial capitalism. Having known something different from their grim present, they were capable of imagining — and fighting for — a radically better future. It is this imaginative capacity that is missing from our second Gilded Age.

biophysicality

The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?     Albert Einstein.

If it is unavoidable that descriptions of the ineffable are in some manner metaphorical, and anthropocentric concepts of the soul are set aside, BEINGS can be defined as 'vehicles' of life and LIFE inferred recursively.

BEINGS are BIOPHYSICAL EXPRESSIONS; the interpretations their ENDOSEMIOTIC systems generate in response to changes in their internal and external environments constructing their ONTOLOGICAL sensibility of self and other that organizes and animates them..

Every BIOPHYSICAL construct requires a psychological correlate in order to survive, any psychological construct requires a BIOPHYSICAL correlate in order to exist. Psychology in actuality is then the METABIOPHYSICAL account SIGNIFIED by a BEING.

ontology, [onto- an individual BEING, -logy an account, to tell or speak], refers here not to metaphysical philosophy but to the METABIOLOGY of a BEING.

A metatransition is a metasystem transition to EITHER a more complex OR a simpler structure, ultimately leading to a transitory OR a permanent evolutionary transition in individuality.

Here, metasystem refers to a general, rather than to a restricted, controlling or organizational system which maintains the homeostasis necessary for the functioning of a system and its subsystems.

Meta-language — a language used to describe or contextualize another language.

The prefix "meta-" is used here as it is used in the term meta-language — a language used to describe or contextualize another language.

Language: a system of arbitrary signals, symbols or signs, used to communicate information.

to communicate: to convey information through a system of arbitrary signals.

Semantic: of or relating to meaning.

Meaning: the sense or reference of an EXPRESSION.

to recognize: to know something as the same as, or belonging to the same class as, something known before.

Here, MEANING refers, not to the output or conclusion of a cognitive function or human mind, but to the motivation that is founded by learning and LIFE.

As little as a ball on a billiard table can move before receiving an impact, so little can a man get up from his chair before being drawn or driven by a motive. But then his getting up is as necessary and inevitable as the rolling of a ball after the impact. And to expect that anyone will do something to which absolutely no interest impels them is the same as to expect that a piece of wood shall move toward me without being pulled by a string.

biopsychosocial

After nine years of international revision efforts coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Health Assembly on May 22, 2001, approved the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health and its abbreviation of "ICF." This classification was first created in 1980 ...to provide a unifying framework for classifying the consequences of disease... ...Functioning and disability are viewed as a complex interaction between the health condition of the individual and the contextual factors of the environment as well as personal factors. The picture produced by this combination of factors and dimensions is of "the person in his or her world." The classification treats these dimensions as interactive and dynamic rather than linear or static. It allows for an assessment of the degree of disability, although it is not a measurement instrument. It is applicable to all people, whatever their health condition. The language of the ICF is neutral as to etiology, placing the emphasis on function rather than condition or disease. It also is carefully designed to be relevant across cultures as well as age groups and genders, making it highly appropriate for heterogeneous populations.

The biopsychosocial overview of wellness and illness, which the WHO presented, is taught today in medical schools; however, despite the publication of the ICF, and the ICD (International Classification of Diseases), its significance still seems relatively unrecognized and its impact on social organization and its institutions relatively minimal — on account, perhaps, of shadow political lobbying.

As the design of the adjective, biopsychosocial, is explicitly anthropocentric, here, a neologism, ONTOLOGENY, is used instead. The design of this, ONTOLOGENY, is universality, and the focus of it is on BEINGS

Anthropic, etc, refer here to anthropocentrism, a narcissistic belief that the human species is the central fact and final aim of a universe that must therefore be understood in terms of human experience, needs, and values.

Human beings are spatially and temporally limited parts of the whole that we call "universe"; yet we experience ourselves and our feelings as separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. 

close

delusions and illusions

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Einstein spoke the refined German of the Bildungsbürgertum, a language characterized by its precision. It might the be reasonable to assume, as an inspection of Einstein's note also suggests, that his use of the word Täuschung (delusion) twice and Illusion once, was considered not careless.

 The German word Täuschung in the original note, meaning 'delusion' (JPG opens in a new tab).

Etymologically the word delusion implies an action, a deceiving, referring here to that suffered by human beings through our consciousness, through which we perceive a deceptive appearance, the illusion of being "separated from the rest".

Technically, delusion is a belief that, though false, has been surrendered to and accepted by the whole mind as a truth; illusion is an impression that, though false, is entertained on the recommendation of the senses or the imagination. Illusion (n.), developed in Church Latin from the late 14c. onwards to mean: a "deceptive appearance".

On delusion, and illusion; from the Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved: 4 October 2022.

I'd like people to reconceptualize cancer as a biological event that triggers stress responses affecting how the disease progresses... Managing those stress responses by adopting healthy eating and exercise habits, getting a good night's sleep, and finding good emotional and social support, should be regarded as much a part of cancer treatment as chemotherapy or radiation.

The article from which the quote was taken, although accessible in 2024 — at https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2003/10/stanford-research-builds-link-between-sleep-cancer-progression.html — has now been taken down. The new article, (at Stanford research builds link between sleep, cancer progression), while still referring to Spiegal's work, intentionally or otherwise, carries an expurgated quote that seems to downplay the research and distance Stanford from Spiegal and the opinion he expressed.

The term BEING, applies here to all forms of LIFE, whether multicellular (humans, ants, plants, etc.); unicellular (bacteria, archaea, algae, etc.); or the MODULAR societies of spcial amoeba, jellyfish, ants, humans, deer, etc.

being — defined recursively.

Life is the condition of being.

Being is the condition of BEINGS.

A BEING is a descendant of BEINGS.

I am a BEING.

Hydrozoa show great diversity of lifestyle; some species maintain the polyp form for their entire life and do not form medusae at all. Polyps of some species propagate vegetatively, forming colonies.. polymorphism occurs in colonies of some species of hydrozoans and anthozoans, the polyps being specialized for functions such as feeding, defense, and sexual reproduction.

Ruppert, Edward E.; Fox, Richard, S.; Barnes, Robert D. (2004). Invertebrate Zoology, 7th edition. Cengage Learning. pp. 148-174; cited in Jellyfish, Taxonomy (list item: Staurozoa), Wikipedia..

Fautin, Daphne G. and Sandra L. Romano. 1997. Cnidaria. Sea anemones, corals, jellyfish, sea pens, hydra. Version 24 April 1997. http://tolweb.org/Cnidaria/2461/1997.04.24 in The Tree of Life Web Project, http://tolweb.org/.

Emphasizing the whole and the interdependence of its parts.