Glen -
As we attempt to untangle I fear we are tangling yet more?
Maybe taking a fresh run will be better?
Q. Can Science be done without language?
A(smith). Some, almost for sure.
Q. Can Science be done more easily/effectively with language?
A(smith). It seems as if this is the case.
Q. Is Science a "collective thing"
A(smith). Some uses of the term Science are specifically a
collective thing. To wit, the collection of all artifacts of a
specific methodology including the hypotheses (tested or not), the
methods and apparatus for testing them, the resulting data gathered
during the testing, the logic and mathematics used to analyze the
data, and most familiarly, the conclusions drawn (scientific theories).
Q. Is Science created *by a collective*
A(smith). Individual elements in the collective thing we call
Science can be created by very small collectives. When an
individual generates hypotheses, contrives experiments, executes
them, gathers data and draws conclusions, this is an important
*part* of science and will be included in the collective artifact.
Without independent verification (and nobody seems to agree on just
how much independence and how much verification is sufficient), the
artifacts are not yet fully vetted and I suppose not "quite"
science. In this sense, Science requires a collective.
Now back to untangling the tangle...
You wax further on empathy:
Now, so far, all these involve animals that look like me, have faces, or
eyeballs, or paws, or whatever. A crow is one step further away. But I
can still do it quite easily. In fact, I can even do it with machines.
I can watch, say, a BEAM robot trying to move around an obstacle and I
can_feel_ its frustration when it fails. I can watch the little
spinning hourglass or whatever on my computer and_feel_ the polling
client process' frustration at the delay, or infinite loop, or whatever
that's making the server process nonresponsive.
This is what I mean when I say "empathy". Now, if you choose to think
about this as a "class of things enough like me", then sure, it's a
predicate (or proto-predicate).
And I think you will agree that anthropomorphism is a form of figurative
thinking as much as the use of metaphor. In fact it seems like a special kind
of metaphor (where the metaphorical source domain is humanity which is
ultimately sourced from one's sense of one's self)? I also understand that it
is very instinctual and may be what allows (domesticated?) animals to learn
from us (and to teach us) by example.
This is what I mean when I say "empathy". Now, if you choose to think
about this as a "class of things enough like me", then sure, it's a
predicate (or proto-predicate). But in making such a leap (from messy
biological wet stuff to hyper-clean Platonic logic stuff), we have a
problem with "definiteness", dynamism, ambiguity, etc. Predicates are
ideal(ized). What I'm doing when I smash a poor fly and feel bad about
it is NOT a clean, ideal. It's real. I'm_there_... inside the sh!t
with the fly. And I can don and doff lots of predicates faster than you
can say "predicate", as well as wearing more than one at a time. I can
do that because my body is real, but my thoughts are not.
I'm not sure that I can say that my "thoughts are not real". I can
agree for the sake of arguement that they are *different* than my
immediate sensations, but then my immediate sensations (go experience
one of many perceptual illusions) are not *real* either. We fit our
*raw* perceptions (whatever that means) onto some series of layers of
models. I would contend that at some point those models are entirely
linguistic/abstract/symbolic (for humans) and that wherever that divide
lies might be an important one.
I believe it's true, that most (if not all) people do something akin to
building and running simulations in their head. However, where we
_might_ disagree is that I believe the components of those simulations
are NOT software, NOT thoughts, NOT ideas, not logic. They are wet,
messy, globs of neurons, astrocytes, epithelials cells, free radicals,
well-bound molecules, etc. Those are the building blocks of the
simulations we build and execute in our heads. What you call "logic" is
actually wet-n-messy biology ... or dirty-nasty physics, depending on
your preference. Pretending you can extract an idealized logic from
it's wet-n-messy machine is pure pretense, to me ... like denying your
origins or some form of self-loathing.
If I calculate something using a slipstick (aka slide rule) you could
say that I am merely (surely?) manipulating physical objects (the slide
in the rule) which is made up of atoms (wood, celluloid, aluminum,
etc.). But I would claim that what I am doing (whilst manipulating said
objects) is manipulating abstractions... in particular, I am using the
(relatively accurate) physical conservation of length in these
objects/materials to "add" and then using the *abstraction* of
exponential notations and arithmetic to then *multiply* and/or to simply
*look up* other functions (e.g. trigonometric) using the device of marks
on a movable pair of objects with an (also) moveable reticule.
When I do "simple" arithmetic in my head, I use a combination of
conventional symbols (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) and rules (decimal positional
numbers) and more rules (addition, multiplication, division, etc) to
achieve these answers. I happen *also* to have a strong intuition about
much arithmetic/mathematics which I not as obviously symbolic. But I
would claim this intuitive calculation is more like a sloppy version of
the slide rule described above. I may do long division in my head
using some short-cuts, but it is entirely symbolic, and I may check my
answer using various intuitive tricks (including visualizing the number
as a rectangular area and the divisor and result as the length of the
sides). I might take a square root of a large number by gathering
together that number (counting) of physical objects and arraying them in
successively larger squares until I run out, then count one edge of the
(completed square) subset and then do the same with the remainder, etc.
until I get tired... Or I can use any one of several methods which are
*more* abstract and less geometric/physical. A square root seems to
have meaning that transcends it's humble origins in geometry and while
it may be *possible* to calculate square roots (or do division) using
geometric (physical?) methods, it is not the "best" or only way. I think
my own long-division in my head (or on paper) is likely more similar
(because it is a symbolic manipulation) to the bit-shifting and 2's
complementing and XORing of registers in a computer than to the physical
arrangements of objects in a geometric array?
When I do mechanical/constructiony things, I (myself) tend toward the
intuitive "cut and try" with various tools and techniques to avoid or
shortcut the use of precise symbology and computation/logic. Where
someone else might whip out a tape measure and read off a number, write
it down, then go cut to that same length, I am more likely to grab a bit
of string, a straight(ish) stick or similar, lay it next to the hole to
be filled, mark it with my fingernail (or just hold it) then move to the
piece to be cut, line it up, and mark *it* with a fingernail (or
recognize a mark or defect in the target bit of wood to be cut) and then
cut... biasing slightly toward "long or short" depending on whether I
want a tight fit or if I can't afford to make a mistake (last piece of
that stock). I usually get really close... close enough to force-fit
into place or to slip-fit it in without more gap than is suitable for
the use.
But that doesn't mean I *never* use complex computations based on
abstractions. When I designed (and layed out and built) my sunroom, I
built it facing south with a faceted (at the scale of the windows I was
putting in) elliptical cross-section. I might have achieved the same
thing *without* a conceptual abstraction we agree to call an ellipse and
for this purpose I think it was not important that such ellipses can be
idealized by a plane cutting a cone, but it was important (convenient)
for layout/construction that the definition of an ellipse was that it be
the figure inscribed by the conserved distance from two loci. I had a
pair of nails driven into my foundation and the same piece of string
throughout the construction.
It is from that context that I talk of science being a real,
dirty-nasty, objectively true thing, independent of, in spite of, the
fantasies we engage in with our thoughts. And therein lies it's success
over even more fantastically imaginary things like religion or Platonic
mathematics. The reason science works and the rest fails is _because_
it's dirtier, nastier, wetter, messier, than whatever we might think ...
which is why the methods section is the important part of a journal
article. ;-)
Ok... I think I agree that Science (as opposed to mathematics) requires
an embedding in the (real, messy, wet, etc.) world. What I'm not clear
on is whether the abstractions we have developed (linguistic in general
and mathematical in particular) are not neccesary (or at least very
useful?).
When first studying the History and Philosophy of mathematics I was told
that the Sumerians had huge stores of clay tablets with all problems of
algebra solved up through quadratics but done by elaborate (and
ultimately redundant if you ignore the abstraction of a variable with a
unit) story problems. This would seem to be an example of your
"pointing" (using langauge to describe the identity of things) and
empathy (to invoke in the imagination the experience of cutting a block
of stone or pacing off a plot of land). If a person (or culture) had
the stamina/capacity to store all such examples and index them
effectively, I suppose the abstractions of algebra would be irrelevant
or unneccesary and maybe even considered a "cheap trick" by those who
had the capacity to hold these problems in their heads?
It seems also that the step from the "method of infinitesmals" to modern
Calculus might have a similar leap in it? The former being amenable to
"point and empathize" and the latter maybe not so much?
hmmm...
- Steve
PostScript:
when I see one of those TV commercials trying to get me to
donate to feed starving children in Africa, I posit that particular
neurological (and other physiological) processes are activated in my
body. The same physical processes are activated when I see an ASPCA
commercial. And when I watch some schmuck get hit in the testicles on
"Jackass: the movie" or whatever.
THIS is why I shot my TV! I also stay away from Youtube except for
instructional videos for tearing down, repairing (and most importantly)
re-assembling my complex devices (pieces of my Digital as well as my
Analog ecology (aka Swamp)).
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