[Avodah] Feedback, causality & G-d

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Aug 02, 2011 at 01:04:15PM -0400, Daniel Eidensohn wrote:
: I am working on the issue of feedback. I can not find any Jewish sources
: regarding feedback - to pick a reference and modify behavior or processes or
: efforts to maximize the referent. This is a fundamental Western idea - but
: not Jewish....
...
: I also can't find where and when this idea developed in the Western World.
...

As I wrote RDE in private (in an email that included the suggestion that
he ask the chevrah)...

The concept of feedback was probably first applied to people
metaphorically, by comparison to mechanical engineering. In engineering,
there are two kinds of feedback loops. Some involve positive
reinforcement, maximizing small changes in the input. This is how one
would design a PA system, for example. Others involve negative feedback,
so as to stabilize the system's output. An early example of negative
feedback was the governor put on steam engines to keep them from running
fast enough to break themselves apart. (It's actually pretty clever,
see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifugal_governor>.)

Until the late 18th cent, I don't think feedback was abstracted out to be
a concept bifnei atzmah. So if you're looking for feedback in earlier
sources, you're going to have to find references to metacoginzance and
awareness of one's thought, and thinking about thoughts, but without
the tool of being able to frame it as feedback.

As some might recall from earlier debates in which I made bold claims
about the mental life of animals -- or lack thereof -- I think this
is Unqelus's point on the creation of man. The "nishmas chayim", the
soul which turns Adam into a dynamic being, is "translated" to "ruach
memalela". "Memalela" could be trivially taken to refer to a soul with
the ability to speak to others. However, given the words being explained,
I think Unqelus is pointing to the ability to "hear" one's own stream
of consciousness.

: *Chovas HaLevavos (4:4)* Even when you are fully aware that effort is
: worthless without G-d's decree, nevertheless you must act like the farmer
: who plows, removes the thorns, seeds and waters his field if there is no
: rain. At the same time he trusts that G-d will make it fertile, guard it
: from calamity, make a bountiful crop and bless it...

Backgammon.

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Zion will be redeemed through justice,
micha at aishdas.org        and her returnees, through righteousness.
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