Patrick,
For the aforementioned reasons, I am probably wrong about all of this, but … Idealism is the position that the categories by which we understand reality exist prior to experience. Empiricism is the position that all knowledge of reality comes from experience. [philosophical] pragmatism is the position that all knowledge is knowledge of experience period. (To talk of a reality beyond experience is just silly.) To a pragmatist, what we call “reality” is just that upon which we will all agree in the very long run. Something is “truthy” (to use your term) just in case it seems like the sort of experience that will endure the test of time. Properties of experience that make them seem “truthy” include coherence with other understandings of prior experiences the capacity to pull together the understandings of working experimentalists. (Think about the manner in which various understandings of the periodic table converged over the 19th Century.) The fact that physicists are arguing about these matters suggests that physicists’ ideas right now are not as “truthy” as those of Newton. Now none of this clarifies for me why you are mad at Marxists and Libertarians. Oddly enough, I would suggest the best way to get at this problem is to precede idiographically, avoiding any –ist or –ism words, to tell a few stories in which you were abused by a particular Marxist and/or libertarian, so we, ourselves, can decide if and how you were treated unfairly. Gotta run, Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Patrick Reilly Sent: Monday, December 28, 2015 7:54 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science | Quanta Magazine Hi Nick: In further reply, I've argued with Marxist's who assert craziness like "under true communism there will be no crime". They assert such nonsense under "rationalist" arguments that a "truly fulfilled person", as a communist utopia must exclusively generate, would be a naturally law-abiding citizen. So the empiricist reliance in the physics dialogue is a useful reference to me in my counter argument of "what actually existing society supports the argument of a more ethical society eliminating irrational crime". I say again that the core strength of using this reference lies in the belief widely held among our intelligentsia that Physics has the quality of offering the purest of all possible truthiness . . . --- Pat On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 9:39 PM, Nick Thompson <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Hi, Patrick, Thanks for getting back to me. Wow, was that a form of libertarianism!? I would have thought the “users” were property owners who “use” the police to protect them from the anger of the poor. Anyway. One of the lessons that FRIAM has taught me over the years is to be much more careful in my deployment of “ist” and “ism” words. They just don’t seem to have the stability of reference that that I assumed when I learned them and started to use them. I don’t know quite what to do about that. It would be nice to be able to identify some clusters of opinion and associate some people with those opinions and be able to refer back to them as points of departure in my thought, but every time I try, I fail. One really good example is the word, “pragmatist.” In some hands, “pragmatism” means solving problems as they come along with a view mostly to the immediate tangible future. Americans are said to given to such pragmatic solutions, as, say, the drone program which eliminates some bad actors in the short run but runs the risk of recruiting others in the long run. In other hands, the word “pragmatism” refers to an almost precisely opposite philosophy which focuses on where human understanding is “headed”, i.e., where it is likely to fetch up in the very long run. For a pragmatist, in this sense, there are no “facts of the matter” beyond human understanding, in the broadest sense, because whatever world is “out there” is filtered through our understanding of it. Now, I think the debate that occurred at the physics conference had a lot to do with this latter sort of pragmatism. Philosophical pragmatists have tended to be very hard on the “theory-fact” distinction. To these folks, a fact is nothing more than a theory that we would be VERY VERY VERY surprised to see contradicted. What I am struggling with, here, is how to map all of this (which may be irrelevant from your point of view) onto On another note, the discussion of the "rationalists" v. "empiricists" crystallized in me how to best argue against Libertarian-hacks and Marxist fops; Now I get that you are pissed off at some folks. I would probably be pissed off by those same people. What I can’t yet work out is the relation between these Libertarians and Marxists and the distinction between rationalist and empiricist. Can you help further? Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ] On Behalf Of Patrick Reilly Sent: Sunday, December 27, 2015 1:22 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science | Quanta Magazine Hi Nick: Well, I practice IP/Patent Law in Silicon Valley and I am rather frequently exposed to libertarian-drivel about how social problems can be solved by applying the principle of liberty and drowning the government. Not unusually, the proponents of these views are quite bright, contentious and have the life experience of, well, and under-30 programmer. Programmers, especially the really good ones, get used to creatively solving any problem that is thrown at them with applied logic. And they often fail to realize that the overwhelming majority of their architecture challenges are thin problems, wherein all relevant influences and underlying principles can be assumed or quickly ascertained. In contrast, most social-legal problems of our technological society exist precisely because these problems are thick problems and can seldom be successfully addressed with empirical analysis of applied alternate solutions. One example of a failed libertarian approach in criminal justice is to attempt to extract payments from the "users" of the criminal justice system to fund the police force, al a Ferguson, where frequent fines were promiscuously issued with the explicit purpose of generating revenue. In particular, the Ferguson police officers were given increasing ticketing quotas and were conditioned to see citizens as ATM machines, especially the less empowered citizens. So I can now cite the article's noting of rationalist/empiricist approaches in physics (a discipline that nerds generally hold to be sacred and inviolate) as a basis for saying, "so first we may want to find a country where you ideas have been actually applied . . . like Somalia or Indonesia . . . " ----- Pat On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 5:51 AM, Nick Thompson <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Hi Patrick, I didn’t altogether follow you here. Can you say a bit more? N Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology Clark University <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/ From: Friam [mailto:[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> ] On Behalf Of Patrick Reilly Sent: Saturday, December 26, 2015 10:13 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Physicists and Philosophers Debate the Boundaries of Science | Quanta Magazine Hi Tom: Thanks for turning me on to this article. It's valuable to known that we are likely 10 EE15 degrees away from observing the true fundamentals of physics. On another note, the discussion of the "rationalists" v. "empiricists" crystallized in me how to best argue against Libertarian-hacks and Marxist fops; the imagined "principles" of political and economic dynamics empowers empiricists to promise candy mountains when we are better off observing the actual effect of actually instantiated policies and laws. The US used to be the world leader in social pragmatism . . . Great article! --- Pat On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 3:59 AM, Tom Johnson <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Something to keep you occupied until New Years Day. https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151216-physicists-and-philosophers-debate-the-boundaries-of-science/ =================================== Tom Johnson - Inst. for Analytic Journalism Santa Fe, NM SPJ Region 9 Director [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> 505-473-9646 <tel:505-473-9646> =================================== ============================================================ 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 -- The information contained in this transmission may contain privileged and confidential information. It is intended only for the use of the person(s) named above. 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