Russ,
I don't know wtf I am. I have always thought of myself as a scientist, but I am sure that many on this list have their doubts. I am certainly not a "hard" scientist. I was hoping by my comment to lure you into a more lengthy explication of the idea that real scientists don't think in terms of causes. But now you have smoked me out instead, so here goes. Many of the philosophers I know, from time to time like to talk about causality as if it were a sophomoric illusion, citing Hume, or some sort of weird quantum theory. But that does not keep them from using causal reasoning freely in their everyday lives. I have never heard a philosopher who was reluctant to say things like "my car stalled because it ran out of gas". I think what they mean when they deny causality is the denial of something that, as a behaviorist, I never thought to entertain: some deep gear-and-cog mechanism lurking behind experience. If one once concedes that all one means by causality is some forms of relation between previous and successive events such that a previous event makes a successive event more likely, then determining causality is just an exercise in experimentation. The sort of thing that all scientists do all the time. Thus, while "causality" may be unfounded in some fastidious philosophical sense, it is by no means empty. I'll quote below from a footnote from a paper we just wrote which tries to preempt criticism our use of "causal" arguments in the paper. The footnote makes reference to work by a colleague and friend of mine, here in Santa Fe, Frank Wimberly. I will copy him here to try and get him to speak up. He tends to lurk, until I say something really foolish, which no doubt I have. The whole paper is at http://www.behavior.org/resource.php?id=675 . So, here is the footnote: Some might argue that in falling back on a more vernacular understanding of causality we have paid too great a price in rigor. However, as our Seminar colleague Frank Wimberly pointed out, the vernacular understanding of casualty is potentially rigorous. Research investigating what aspects of the world lay people are sensitive to when assigning causality suggests people are sensitive to particular types of probabilistic relationships (Cheng, Novick, Liljeholm, & Ford, 2007) and that certain types of experiments are better than others at revealing such relationships (Glymour & Wimberly, 2007). Frank? Nick From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott Sent: Monday, March 25, 2013 11:05 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice Nick, You're the scientist; I'm only a computer scientist. So you are more qualified to talk about science and cause. Do you think science organizes its theories in terms of causes? I see equations, entities, structures, geometries, and mechanisms, but I don't see causes. As I'm sure you know, the notion of "cause" is very slippery. I think science is better off without it. But I'm interested in your perspective. What do you think? <https://app.yesware.com/t/ac60524099a2c2922efb3fea7fcd30ecf03a1482/851f757a 2285823ad6d3350e1f01df84/spacer.gif> <http://app.yesware.com/t/ac60524099a2c2922efb3fea7fcd30ecf03a1482/851f757a2 285823ad6d3350e1f01df84/spacer.gif> [If this is a thread hijack, I apologize. I am very interested in the subject, though.] <https://app.yesware.com/t/ac60524099a2c2922efb3fea7fcd30ecf03a1482/9e8cb4a2 ede661bd0c79d43ed37f8b20/spacer.gif> <http://app.yesware.com/t/ac60524099a2c2922efb3fea7fcd30ecf03a1482/9e8cb4a2e de661bd0c79d43ed37f8b20/spacer.gif> -- Russ Abbott _____________________________________________ Professor, Computer Science California State University, Los Angeles My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688 Google voice: 747-999-5105 Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/ vita: <http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/> sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ CS Wiki <http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/> and the courses I teach _____________________________________________ On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 10:02 PM, Steve Smith <sasm...@swcp.com> wrote: Russ - Steve, you mentioned Lamarkian evolution. I'd be very interested to find out more about some of your daughter's examples. This was on a long drive from NM to OR last Thanksgiving... in the course of about 30 hours of driving we talked about a LOT of things. I am pretty sure this first exmaple is merely "neo-Lamarckian" or "Lamarckianesque" as they only applied to the single next generation. The germline of the child does not carry the changes, although if the child experiences the same conditions the parent did, the same epigenetic mechanisms would be in effect in the subsequent generation. This example had to to do with Long Term Potentiation (a feature of neural connectivity). What surprised me most was that this particular example involved the female/mother/eggs which are not manufactured "on the fly". It seems more likely that the father/male/sperm would be prone to this type of effect? There may have been two sub-examples, one about memory and one about "bad mothering"? A more Lamarckian example was, I think, in Roundworms and involved RNA interference. The result (minus the details) was something like hereditible immunity. A parallel example I *can* remember was the case of Tasmanian Devils and what is known as DFTD for Devil Facial Tumor Disease. Apparently it is an *infectuous* cancer (non-viral, meaning it isn't about a virus transferring from one host to another, then causing cancer). A cancerous cell from one individual literally becomes part of the other individual's organism... like an accidental organ donation or skin graft. Apparently the Devils are prone to lots of scrapping with each other and when one with a tumor on it's face scraps with one without, a cancerous cell (or cells) can get transferred to from the skin of one to the other and it can in fact 'graft' right into the epithelial layer. I don't know if this is more common/likely because it is cancerous, or if Devils were already exchanging skin cells before this cancer emerged? The point of this Tasmanian Devil example is that it is as unexpected (to me anyway) as examples of Lamarckian evolution would be. -- Russ Abbott _____________________________________________ Professor, Computer Science California State University, Los Angeles My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688 Google voice: 747-999-5105 Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/ vita: <http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/> sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ CS Wiki <http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/> and the courses I teach _____________________________________________ On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 3:42 PM, Steve Smith <sasm...@swcp.com> wrote: Gary/Pamela/(Stephen, Carl, Eric, ...) - I know several (many?) on this list know Stu better than I... so I apologize if I sounded overly critical. I prefer Pamela's description of him being *careless* with references as opposed to my own use of the *honest*. I also admit that I do not know if he sees himself as a rock-star... that is perhaps the default category I put people in who are simultaneously *good*, *self-possessed* and *charismatic*. I actually *like* most rock stars (within reason) even if I might not care for their music. As an aside... does anyone remember Chris Langton appearing in Rolling Stone (CA 1990?)... I searched their archives and did not find any references (nor on the internet at large?). I remember the article including a sexed-up spread of him in front of a Connection Machine? I suppose I could be hallucinating or have come from an alternate history? I also smiled at your term "demigod" as I often use "Titans" to describe the pantheon of my wife's sibling group... she is oldest of 8 *mostly* high functioning, *very* charismatic, *definitely* self-possessed siblings. They all revered their father who was a humble but charismatic physics professor. None of them took up science per se, though one has a PhD in psychology. I would not use *rock star* to describe any of their self-image, though there is one who insists he *is* Elvis... and sometimes we are tempted to believe him. There are definitely characters right out of Greek, Roman, Norse, even Hindu mythology in her family... My wife is Kali *and* Loki rolled into one I think. I have always been inspired by Kauffman's ideas as best I could understand them, which has been highly variable, depending on the circumstance. This says more about me than about Stu. I read his lecture notes in the late-nineties... the ones which ultimately became the core of _Investigations_ (or so it seemed to me). I had read _OofO_ and _At Home in the Universe_ previously. It may have been coincidence or something stronger like kismet that I read Investigations interleaved with my reading of Christopher Alexander's (Pattern Language fame) _Notes on the Synthesis of Form_ with D'Arcy Thompson's _On Growth and Form_ as backup reference. I was traveling lightly in New Zealand at the time with none of my usual distractions nagging me. It was a month of deep thought informed by Alexander and Kauffman equally. My nature is to be guarded around people with significant charisma (and me married into aforementioned pantheon!). I appreciate the need for and the value of the persuasive and the self-confident, even in the realm of science where ideas *by definition* must stand on their own. There is value for those who can bring us to *want* to believe enough to put in the hard work to believe things on their own merits. Unfortunately that might be the dividing line between science and Science(tm). I suppose I mistrust those who appear to be trying to corner the franchise on Science(tm) in their neighborhood. Nevertheless, I am *more* interested in Kauffman's ideas here and hope that we will discuss them a bit? - Steve ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com <https://app.yesware.com/t/ac60524099a2c2922efb3fea7fcd30ecf03a1482/c3acb76d 0941a86b5f06d3d57d01ba29/spacer.gif> <http://app.yesware.com/t/ac60524099a2c2922efb3fea7fcd30ecf03a1482/c3acb76d0 941a86b5f06d3d57d01ba29/spacer.gif> ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
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