Chinese Ontology

An Aperçu

Chinese ontology (cosmology) can be put into two main statements:

A. Everything in the world is changing.

B. The world, in which everything is changing, doesn't change.

This two main statements are designing a paradoxical constellation.


Hence,

1. The finiteness of the world is not closed but open.
Because of the changing statement (A) the finiteness (B) is not static.
"In a closed world, which consists of many worlds, there is no narrowness. In such a world, which is open and closed at once, there is profoundness of reflection and broadness of interaction." (The Book of Diamonds, Intro)

2. Everything in the world is connectable.
Because of the finite structure of the world, entities are accessible in many ways.

3. Connections are bi-directional.
Because of the finiteness there is no uni-directionality in linear time.

4. Bi-directionality is chiastic.
Because the world is changing, the way back is not exactly the same as the way forwards. This is defining the heterarchic grid structure of the world.

5. The modeling process of Chinese ontology is not phono-logocentric.
Because of the paradoxical character of the "ontology" it can not be represented by phono-logical statements of identity-based mathematics and logic.

Therefore,

6. Because it is written in logical sentences, this aperçu of a definition of Chinese ontology is a paradox metaphor.

7. A first operative description and formalization of Chinese ontology is proposed by the Diamond Theory, which is in a trans-phonological sense a paradox.

8. Diamond theoretic paradoxy is positively inscribed in Diamond Theory as the interplay, i.e., chiasm, between categories and saltatories. Saltatories are complementary to categories. Complementarity is not duality.

9. The structure of the interplay (chiasm) of categories and saltatories in Diamond Theory is defined by the proemial relationship.

10. The proemiality of the proemial relationship is inscribed as an interplay between order-, exchange- and coincidence relations, distributed over different loci.

11. Because of the finiteness of the world Diamonds have a location in it. The location (position) of Diamonds is inscribed by their place-designators.

Thus,

12. The self-referential paradoxy/parallaxy of the metaphor of Chinese ontology is realized by the operative calculus of Diamonds as an interplay between categories and saltatories of Diamond Theory.

The Complementary Blog: Diamond Strategies

Have a look at the complementary Blog to the Chinese Challenge Blog:

Rudy's Diamond Strategies.

The new Blog is presenting, step by step, new insights into the mathematical theory of Diamonds.


Chiasm (Categorification, Diamondization)

Diamond: 2-graphs with 2-structures

i) Data: 2-diagram C1–s,t––>Co/Co<–diff–C1 in 2-Set Objects in diamonds are involved into 2 operations: coincidence and difference. Coincidence is producing composition and therefore commutativity.
Differences are producing hetero-morphisms and therefore jumpoids.

ii) Structure: composition, identities + complement, differences

iii) Properties: unit, associativity + diversity, jump law

iv) Interaction: Chiasm between category and saltatory.

"In ordinary category theory we have 1-dimensional arrows ––>; in higher-dimension category theory we have higher-dimension arrows."

"...n-categories are studying morphisms between morphisms." Tom Leinster

Hence, Diamond theory is neither studying linear ordered arrows nor morphisms between linear ordered arrows but the complementarity of morphisms and hetero-morphisms, acceptional and rejectional morphisms, i.e., the relations between the operation of composition and its complementary morphisms.

In this sense, diamond theory is studying 2-dimensional, i.e., tabular categories, independent from the questions of n-categories or others.

Thus, diamond theory is the study of tabular categories as an interaction of categories and saltatories. Saltatories are the complementary diamond structures of categories.

The term interaction is correct because the interplay between categories and saltatories happens inside the diamond definition and is not only a meta-theoretical fact like the duality of categories in category theory.

Compositions as operations are not thematized in Category theory but only their result, which are new morphisms.

Diamond theory is thematizing the activity of the composition operator not as a morphogram but as a complementarity to the operator, implemented as a hetero-morphism.

Diamonds are thematizing the basic operation of category theory as such: the operation of composition. The thematization is modeled into the hetero-morphisms.

In a general setting of graphematic analysis of composition the morphogrammatics of the operator "composition" has to be taken into account, too. That is, the neither-nor gesture of categorical object and morphism has a double face: hetero-morphism and morphogram of composition.

As Categories can be generalized to n-Categories, Diamonds can be generalized to n-Diamonds.

Topics
Category Theory: object/morphism
n-Category: morphism/morphism
Diamond Theory: categories/saltatories.

A Schematic Calendar of Epochs

One of the big successes of Western globalization is the globalization of its understanding of human nature. There is one and only one such understanding. And this is the Western concept of human nature. Other understandings of human nature are simply not yet matured to the Western model.
This judgement, obviously, is applied to the Islamic world and it is thought that the new Chinese awakening will soon follow the Western model of humanity with all its noble achievements.

The idea of different ways of realizing humanity, different types of human self-definition, is taboo.

It is accepted only backwards to distinguish high civilizations from Primitive cultures. A projection into the futures is damaged by the well known attempts of the German Uebermensch ideology. Thus, to stay clean, we have to believe in Americanism and its ideology of humanity and human rights.

This is not in conflict with the American dream of TransHumanism. TransHumanism is not questioning the very idea of human beings but tries to augment pragmatically its very realization.

Funny enough, Gotthard Gunther, with his cybernetic studies from the 50s, is one of the Grand fathers of TransHumanism .

As a philosopher of history, Gunther proposed another model of anthropology and civilizations which is open to futures and able to understand the past. Because of its structural conceptuality it is as neutral to ideologies as possible.

Gotthard Gunther proposed a theory of a connection between historical epochs and the structural complexity of their logics used in practice and reflected in science. The complexity of a logical formation was, at this time, considered as the many-valuedness of a logical system.

– The epoch of Animism is considered as the epoch of 1-valuedness.
– The modern Occidental, esp. European epoch is connected with 2-valuedness.
– The post-modern US-American epoch is proposed as 3-valuedness.

– It seems that the post-Occidental epoch of Chinese thinking is linked with
4-valuedness which is opening up the pre-semiotic patterns of morphogrammatics and general m-valuedness.This step is not yet considered in Gunther's approach.

At the time of the proposal of his theory of Western civilisation, topics like morphogrammatics had not yet been discovered.

It has to be mentioned, that Gunther’s concept of many-valuedness is poly-contextural and thus principally different from the logical multiple-valuedness of Lukasievicz, Post and others. Their multiple-valuedness is strictly mono-contextural.

The first 3 epochs are dominated by their Double Blind Spot, that is, the lack of self-reflectionality and awareness of being positioned into history.
Technically, their morphogrammatics are not accessible and are in the hidden.

The 3-valued epoch is opening up a certain relativism of 2-valuedness, discovering a first Blind Spot, but remains in the negativity of denial (of roots, etc.). Such a relativism has no means to reflect itself and to produce a "positive" self-definition.

This ability of self-reflection is given within the 4-valued model, but this model is realizable only with the simultaneous acceptance of its morphogrammatics. That is, with the acceptance of the distinction between general valuedness and value-free kenogrammatics.

The first three epochs had been linked with the semantic and meontic (semantics of negativity) function of valuedness.

The fourth epoch is rejecting the dominance of valuedness in favor of the activity of diamondization as an activity of kenogrammatics.

Valuedness is strongly connected with names, notions and sentences.
Multi-valuedness can be considered as a classic interpretation of the semantics of inter-textuality.

"Totem and Tabu" may correspond to an ancient name-based understanding of the world.
Notion-based thinking is opening up a scientific-narrative approach to the world in the sense of the first world model (Lambda Abstraction).
A reflective, relational and relativistic word-view is based on sentences (Modal logics).

With the new distinction of valuedness (semantics, meontics) and morphogrammatics (kenogrammatics) a full reflectional and interactional system is possible.

Differentiations in the transitions

According to Gunther’s theory of history the transition from the 1-valued to the 2-valued world-view happened in a differentiation of two decisions producing a structural difference between the Oriental and the Occidental existence (psyche).

Formally, the semantics of a two-valued system has a positive and a negative value. The function of the values is to designate or to non-designate. With the choice for a coincidences between the positive values and its designative function a strict symmetry between positivity and negativity is guaranteed. This is the Occidental decision.

The Oriental decision is the opposite:
The negative value has a designative function. With that, a indefinite asymmetry is established.

In epistemological term, the symmetric 2-valued world-view is based on a egological ground, founding subjectivity, spirituality and temporality, the asymmetric concept is founding spaciality, objectivity.

The grammatological coincidences are obvious:
The Occidental world-view is based on alphabetical sign systems, i.e., logocentrism.
The Oriental world-view is based on a planar system of characters.

Technologically, the western model was accessible to formalization, producing formal systems, incorporating the Arabian algebraic and algorithmic concepts and procedures and exploiting the power of the Indian concept of zero.
This historic formation was then connected with the idea of mechanical computation, like it was realized long ago by the Chinese Abacus.

A similar formalization of the structure of the Chinese writing system like the formalization of alphabetism has not yet been attempted or considered as a necessary task.

Further on, more open questions are occurring.
What are the differentiations in the transition from the 2-valued to the 3-valued system?
And, what are the corresponding transitions from the 3-valued to the 4-valued world-view?

A 3-valued system is at first enabling circular structures, i.e., negation cycles. Thus, the characterization of the values as designative or non-designative is relative.

The hegemony of strict dualism of the 2-valued approach is dissolved. Such a negation cycle is the smallest possible real cycle next to the 2-valued self-cycle.

This may be a hint to understand in a positive way the US-American relativism and its realization in pragmatism. (Peirce, Dewy, Royce)

But also its structural Double Blindness.

Additional to this "value-oriented" structural approach of Gunther, considerations about the differentiation of alphabetic and hieroglyphic writing systems had been involved into his theory of history. The thesis of a weakness of alphabetism in contrast to a specific identity strength of Chinese writing had been explored.

"That is, in holding to the ideograms, lies an unconscious insight of a massive asymmetry between spoken and written language. It is the written language, on which a main culture rests. It possesses an identity strength, which stands out clearly against the identity weakness of the spoken word." Gunther

Media theoreticians, like Alfred Kittler, have studied in recent time the connection between alphabetism, culture and computer technology in European history, but they are not aware that mathematics, programming paradigms, formal systems are depending on the linearity and atomicity of alphabetism.

This blindness of alphabetism and its late ideological defence by European media scientists is just what has to be surpassed if we want to stop the self-destruction of culture in general.

Gotthard Günther's DETAILED STATEMENT OF THE PROJECT, 1953

But the proof of a new logic is found in its application. I have therefore - after developing the basic categories of that new technique of thinking - applied my three-valued non-Aristotelian logic to the problem of History.

If you look at American History with conceptual categories of non-Aristotelian origin this course of human events does not longer appear as a continuation of Western Civilization but as a novel departure from the general trend of history in the Old World of the Eastern Hemisphere.

A new and indigenous form of historical existence is emerging in the New World of the Western Hemisphere - and with it goes a principal rejection (or technical secularization) of the metaphysical premises of Old World History. This is indicated in Thomas Jefferson's amazing criticism of Plato's "Republic" and his repudiation of the historical concepts implied in Plato' s philosophy.

My interpretation of American History is based on the following trend of thought: Generally speaking the history of Man has so far developed on two very different historical levels.

The first is that of the so-called Primitive Culture with the concomitant metaphysical world-conception of animism. The animistic interpretation of Reality is the product of a mind which works with a one-valued logic. Here the subject is completely identified with the object, namely the world that surrounds it.

The following, second level of the history of Man is that of the so-called regional High Civilizations (Egypt, India, China, Greek/Roman and Western Civilization of northern Europe). In this second form of historical existence Man develops concepts of life based on a two-valued pattern of consciousness.
It is significant that Aristotle's logic of duality was discovered in this era.

Traditionally American History is regarded as belonging to that epoch. It is tacitly assumed that since the advent of Columbus America should be regarded as an extension of Western Civilization.

It is my contention, on the other hand, that American History does not anymore belong to this second level which is characterized by the appearance of regionally limited High Civilization!

On the American continent a novel form of History is coming into existence, constituting a third level of World-History.

The structure of the human consciousness is changing and with it the spiritual aims of the race. Not the knowledge of natural objects but the science of Man himself will be the central core of all intellectual efforts.

This, however, presupposes a new logic in which an exact theory of the subject as different from the mere object is developed.

For this purpose a three-valued logic is absolutely necessary.

The American mind is potentially non-Aristotelian ... or let us say: post-Aristotelian.

The primitive mind is pro-Aristotelian, and the epoch of regional High Civilizations is dualistic. Only this dualistic mentality corresponds with the concepts of a two-valued logic. (Gotthard Gunther, 1953)
http://www.thinkartlab.com/pkl/archive/GUNTHER-GODEL/GUNTHER-GODEL.htm

中国挑战 - 电视新闻 (TV News, Weina Betty Sun)

《中国的挑战：一个新猜想》

—— 对"中国挑战"说的一个注释

"我们能从中国人没有教我们的地方学到什么？"

——鲁道夫

主流文化依赖于书写模式。

民族的理性特质、他们的技术有效性、他们把社会组织起来、交流信息、以及
他们的艺术科学等等这一切都跟书写模式分不开；人
们在书写和创建自己作为典籍的文化实践中学会思维和生活。

主流文化总是依赖于某种书写里包含的理性和技术模式。一

般来说，书写是一种文化、政治和技术形成的最抽象的机制和技术

——欧洲的文化及第一次猜想

欧洲的文化依赖于字母书写和印度的零占位机制，这种机制使得算术、计算的经济合理、形
式化和编程语言成为可能。

莱布尼茨提出第一个关于中国文字的猜想。
他设想了一种"通用语言 作z为国家和人民之间沟通的可信赖的通信基础。

他的这个想法类似于中国的象形文字，
中国象形文字通过典籍在不同口头语言之间起着桥梁作用。

要实现这一梦想他发明了凝练的数字表示和计算系统，这就是二进制系统，依此
作为欧洲对古老的中国"易经 "的一个回应，
最终他发明了独立于任何民族语言的运算方法和逻辑，还有作
为计算机的原型的计算机器。

现代欧洲科学技术遵循了莱布尼茨的想法，产生了技术上的二进制主义和数字主义，并形成
了今天西方——以及亚洲——的基本技术和经济力量。

但是，欧洲的技术力量停留在"老欧洲"的意识形态、形而上学和伦理学框架和限制当中。

——美国的美式梦想

在美国，欧洲的思维和技术形式摆脱了她的形而上学老套子，发明了"无所不在的计算"，实
现了人工智能，人工生命，认知系统，机器人等等；实
现了无限扩张的数字主义

今天，美国的美式梦想气数已尽！

美式梦想的成功已经接近了尾声；而老欧洲还由她的古希腊起源支配着，
摆脱了欧洲限制的美式梦想现在迷失了根本，失掉了设计未来的精神源泉。

美国的必然衰落是由于"无根"！

与欧洲分道扬镳，成了无本之木无源之水，在数字主义达到了她的颠峰。



在沉湎于"数字形而上学" 中并归结为0和1的不朽精神世界中，展望
更先进的科技发展似乎是不可能的了。

全部美国式发展会在"数字实用主义"世界观中固步自封！

所以，基于古希腊字母文字、印度的数论和莱布尼兹采用中国文字模型，这
一切作为欧洲和美国的美式梦想失去了设计世界未来发展的力量。

——中国书写模式

中国没有发展出类似的哲学 、科学 和技术 ，这是因为她的超复杂的书写模式，
现在正在采用西方的科学技术成果；
但是，中国在下一个时代自有对西方的优势：有没有被开发的丰富典籍资源。

中国文字永远是她的文化和政治的基础和保证，没有"字母线性主义"和数字主义的限制。
西方思维 的线性性质是更容易映射进入中国理性的"表格样式"的。

这种映 射过程，在中国文字的自明性质方面不会导致任何混乱。

中国文字概念是表格样式的、多维度的、嵌入式的、开放的、复
杂的和基于民族最古老文化传统的。

而这些特征正符合科学技术在处理现代社会问题和开创新未来的要求的。

因此，为今而言，所谓中国的挑战，不是为西方视为危惧的新的经济实力和经济扩张，而
是在作为未来技术革命基础的中国理性重新发现的可能性方面。

中国理性把任何美国式的东西远远地甩在了后面。中国对西方的挑战不是经济的、
也不是政治的或者军事的；

苏醒的技术中国和经济中国这个事件并不构成对西方的所谓的"大挑战"，
真正的挑战是重新发现她的文字系统，并设计出新的理性形式系统，
就像创造新的数学和新的编程语言一样；

是面对一个崛起的中国我们是否做好了充分的准备。

因为忙于适应西方的技术和经济，
中国官方还没有意识到这种形成未来主流文化基础的可能性。
可能吧，十九世纪是欧洲世纪，二十世纪是美国世纪，
而二十一世纪将是中国世纪。

——形态语法学：第二个猜想

我的想法作为后欧洲的第二个关于中国文字的猜想由此而生。
第一步，我提出"多结构逻辑（Polycontextural Logic）"的研究和
"形态语法学（Morphogrammatics）"研究，作为在西方模式走到尽头时，对
中国理性和技术的概念系统作的一个可能的、新的理解。这

一工作——我知道它的风险——是某种实验性的猜想，具有永恒自解构的能力，超越西
方、亚洲在思维和技术方面的"具象中心主义"，形而上学的单一结构主义。


形态语法学和多结构理论包含并且超越西方的思维、计算和编程语言的设计，能够
满足新时代对操作理性提出的表格样式 的处理和对复杂性处理的要求。

猜想总是文化传统革命的前奏，总是为文化管理者所拒绝。

作者：Rudolf Kaehr
翻译：韩宪平
来源：思维实验室
网址：www.thinkartlab.com


《中国的挑战：一个新猜想》Chinese Challenge-TVNews

The Chinese Challenge Video-Stills

《中国的挑战：一个新猜想》

The Chinese Challenge

—— 对"中国挑战"说的一个注释

Hallucinations for Other Futures

Donna and Shell


我们能从中国人没有教我们的地方学到什么？

What can we learn from China that China is not teaching us?

Europe is lost in its search of the dying and buried roots in Greek heritage.

我们能从中国人没有教我们的地方学到什么？

What can we learn from China that China is not teaching us?

今天，美国的美式梦想气数已尽！

Today, the US-American dream is exhausted!

今天，美国的美式梦想气数已尽！


美式梦想的成功已经接近了尾声；而
老欧洲还由她的古希腊起源支配着，摆脱了欧洲
限制的美式梦想现在迷失了根本，失掉了设计未来的精神源泉。

While Old Europe is still occupied with its Greek roots,
US-America, who got rid of these European limitations,
now, is missing roots as inspirational resources to design futures.

The necessary decline of America is rooted in its lack of roots.

Today, the US-American dream is exhausted and has come to a closure.

The Chinese Challenge to the West is the re-discovery of a
new way of thinking, again

中国对西方的挑战不是经济的、也不是政治的或者军事的；苏醒的技术中
国和经济中国这个事件并不构成对西方的所谓的"大挑战"，真正的挑战是
重新发现她的文字系统，并设计出新的理性形式系统，就像创造新的数学
和新的编程语言一样；是面对一个崛起的中国我们是否做好了充分的准备。


The Chinese Challenge to the West is not economical, political or military.
It is not the event of a re-awakening economic and technological China which is the Grand Challenge to the West but the possible re-discovery of the operationality of its writing system for the design of new rational formal systems, like new mathematics and new programming languages.

China has found its roots again to build a future.
China’s historical advantage to the West is that its scriptural
resources are not yet exploited.


中国挑战向中国将保存它自己的文化在与人类一个新世纪的转折过程中。

它怎么可能做? 我们
How can it be done?
let's do it!
The Chinese Challenge to China is to preserve her own culture in
the process of the transition to a new epoch of humanity.

它怎么可能做? 我们做它!
How can it be done? Lets do it!

它怎么可能做? 我们做它!

它怎么可能做? 我们
How can it be done?

我们做它!The Chinese Challenge to China is the chance to re-discover its
own
way of thinking, again.

let's do it! 我们做它!

我们做它!

Hallucinations always had been at the beginning of cultural revolutions.
It always has been the job of cultural administration to deny it.

猜想总是文化传统革命的前奏，总是为文化管理者所拒绝。
Stills from the Video "The Chinese Challenge::中国挑战" about an idea of the new role of China and Chinese thinking beyond economical, political and military matters in English and Chinese by Shell Ni (film maker, Shanghai/London) and Donna Rosso (actress, Ireland/Glasgow) recorded spontaneously by me, holding the wee camera into the air, at a dark Sunday afternoon at the Garnethill/Glasgow viewpoint, edited by Ann Vance (film maker, Glasgow).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCNcFmPl-9E

Proto-Structure of Diamond Strategies

„Everything is true: not everything is true; both, everything is true, and
not everything is true; or, neither everything is true nor is everything not true.
This is the teaching of the Buddha.“ Madhyamika Karika

Beyond names and propositions, again
Without getting lost into the deepness of philosophical and grammatological studies we can apply the mechanism of proto-structure, i.e., the activity of tetraktomai,i.e., to use the tetraktys, on a more common arena of emotive-cognitive organization in communicational situations. The Diamond Strategies are obviously operating beyond notions and statements, thus, if applied in therapeutic situations, they are not primarily a "talking cure" (Freud).

Our orientation in the world is mainly guided by sentence/notion based thematizations. To diamondize, like to tetraktomize, is to abstract and to subverse this semantic level of thematization in favor of its dynamic patterns, i.e., the morphograms of interaction/reflection of communication.
The process of morphic abstraction is pushed by questioning the existence (ek-sistenz, Heidegger) of the communicand (client).
The existence is what can be abstracted from the historic and local stories of the person involved. But such an existence is not identical with an identical kernel of a self or ego of a person(a) (mask).

In Ancient time of Pythagoras and the Chinese and Indian thinker, this procedure was not an abstraction but the genuine and direct way of approaching reality.

In a form, reduced to logocentric purposes, the diamond is well known in the West since Aristotle as the Square of Oppositions, and it had many modern applications in logic (Belnap, Fitting), psychology (Piaget), semiotics (Pierce), linguistics (Greimas), etc. Today general studies of the "Square of Oppositions" are promoted by the Universal Logic group which is running its 2nd World Congress at Xi'an, China.
Obviously, the Diamond Strategies are not excluding such logical studies of the Square but are not to gather under their umbrella.

There are many existential and emotional strategies today to defend ones established attitudes against a new way of thinking and thematizing the world. One is well documented in the Gödel-Günther-Correspondence.
To overcome such barriers, the Diamond Strategies always had been of great help.

Proto-Structure of the Diamond Strategies

Also deconstruction is not simply a method, Derrida gives us some general strategies of deconstruction.

Reversion of hierarchy

"In a traditional philosophical opposition we have not a peaceful coexistence of facing terms but a violent hierarchy. One of the terms dominates the other (axiologically, logically, etc.), occupies the commanding position. To deconstruct the opposition is above all, at a particular moment, to reverse the hierarchy." (Derrida, Positions, 56-57).

The double gesture displacements

"Deconstruction must through a double gesture, a double science, a double writing, put into practice a reversal of the classical opposition and a general displacement of the system. It is that condition alone that deconstruction will provide the means of intervening in the field of oppositions it criticize and which is also a field of non-discursive forces." (Derrida, Marges, 392)

Interestingly, the Diamond Strategies are incorporating both Ancient attitudes:
1. The tetralemmatic and tetractic way of conceiving truth (Buddha, Pythagoras), and
2. the pragmatic or praxeological apraoch of Chinese thinkers to the relevancy of statements as opening futures instead of claiming eternal truth.

Let us play the game of the Diamond Strategies

From the frozen attitudes of our hierarchical thinking and feelings to the endless flow of inventing and co-creating our futures in the open chiasm of systems of multiple opposites.


Step one: Position (Problem, Conflict)
Describe your state or situation of the moment with a good, short but precise statement. It´s your statement of position, affirmation, it´s your starting point of the game.

Question1: What is the situation/constellation you want to explore/re-solve?

Go with your personal starting statement as deep as possible into your emotional and/or cognitive state. Ask yourself about your state formulated in your first starting statement. Elaborate the semantical and emotional context of this statement. Take your last/best sentence of your exploration of your feelings and thinking of your situation and write it down.

Step two: Opposition (Subversion, Solution)
Create the opposite of your state, of your belief statement, of the sentence which describes your situation most concrete.

Question2: What is the opposite of your starting position?

Our language gives us a lot of possibilities to build opposites: logic, grammar, semantics, word games, phonetics, writing, gestures etc. It´s not only negation, you also have inversion of all sorts of order in a sentence or between sentences, dualities, reflections, mirroring and many other methods of translating a statement into it´s opposites.

Example
Position: Nobody loves me.
first opposite: Everybody loves me.
second opposite: Everybody hates me.
third opposite: Everybody loves you.

I would like this one as a nice opposite of "Nobody loves me." :: "I love anybody."

What are the connections between the position and the opposites? You are discovering a Semantic Field of statements between position and its oppositions.

Third step: (neither-nor-): sovereignity
Change between your two states (position vs. opposition). Take position and all feelings for the one, and then take all feelings and surely also all thoughts for the other one.

Question3: What's your neither-nor of position/opposition?

Change and feel what happens when you are changing from position to the opposite. Play this transition game as often until you feel and think that both are equivalent (like light/shadow). Then you will feel immediately that you are free from both: you are not the one and not the other.

You as a subject, as a person you are neither this nor that. This insight and this feeling, that you are not identified with one of the sides of the opposite is your third position. Here you are free, you have the most possible distance to all of the world. Then, how do you see the two other positions, how do you feel them? Go back to the first and to the second. Which do you like most? Play the game until you feel all three positions as equally relevant. All three belongs to you.

Fourth step: all of that at once - pure richness
But this is not all we can do. We can also have the opposite of this distance and sovereignty of the 'neither-nor'. It is the fourth position of 'both-at-once'.
Now you have often changed your positions and you had have very strong feelings and insights in this three positions and transitions. You will discover that all this belongs to you. And not only one after the other but all at once. You are all that at once. You are both position and opposition.

Question4: What is your both-at-once of position/opposition"?

Re-Solution
Then you make the complete trip: you go around the 4 positions in at least 6 primary steps, you have 24 permutations of your primary steps- that's your universe of experience(s) at this very first step within the Diamond Strategies.

Exploration
Each station of the Diamond elaborated serves as a new starting point (Position) for further diamondized explorations of your complex emotional/cognitive space.
With the game of the Diamond Strategies you have deliberated yourself from your fixation on one point of view in describing, reflecting, feeling, deciding, organizing etc. your life, your future of your organization or company.

Opening existential futures: Enabling vs. disabling

All of the four positions of the first Diamond Strategies can be asked about the future possibilities, about their perspectives, about their horizon of new behaviours, etc.
You can ask: What enables me this, which are the new possibilities for me, what new chances are opened up by this state, position etc. for me.

First Step: Enabling vs. disabling
Take one of the 4 positions of the Diamond, then ask one of the questions about enabling/disabling.
1. What is the position enabling/disabling,
2. What is the opposition enabling/disabling,
3. The neither–nor– of enabling and disabling,
„What neither enables nor disables me A?“
4. The both–and– of enabling and disabling,
„What both at once enables and disables me A?“

Second Step: Iterations
You can also freely repeat and alternate your questions about enabling and disabling, thus producing a grid of enabling/disabling positions.


Diamond Strategies of Thematizations

After the more existential application of the Diamond Strategies we are applying them onto the linguistic and grammatological situation of notion/proposition.

Designing the Diamond
A possible Diamond of notion/sentence can be established as:
Notion: name-based conceptualization,
Proposition: proposition-based thinking,
Morphogram: neither name nor proposition,
Inter-textuality: both at once, name and proposition.


Iteration of the Diamond
notion–––>proposition–––>notion

Accretion of the Diamond
proposition as position, new opposition could be text.
morphogram as position, new opposition could be image.
inter-textuality as position, new opposition could be medium.


The diagram shows a possible accretion of the first diamond. There is no strict necessity to develop the diamond this way, other decisions for an interpretation of the knots can enter the game, producing other interpretations of diamonds.

Diamondize vs. Syllogisms
Trees are graphic representations of the notional entailment relation which is at the base of logical thinking, deduction, not restricted to Aristotelian syllogism only.

It is of importance to understand that such an accretion is not building a subordinating order, like a diaeresis, thus, it is not a pattern founding deduction, syllogism and linear or tree-like conceptualization. The knots of this diamond, understood as a proto-structure, can be themselves starting points, origins, for binary trees.

Because of its commutative structure, the graph of the proto-structure is a grid and has neither an origin nor an end. Thus, it might be slightly misleading to write the proto-structure with a beginning (1:1) as it is presented in Gunther’s papers. This happens for notational purpose only.