On September 10, 2016 9:45:40 PM PDT, Nick Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: >I think it's the word "registration" that has me most confused. Can you help >a bit further?
Registration is when a quality/feature coalesces or seems to emerge from the ambience ... when a structure appears amongst the structureless noise. >Does inductive inference involve metaphor? That seems to be the lurking >question, here. Inductive inference is famously incomplete without some >fundamental assumptions (abductions) concerning the kind of world we are in >... a stable one, for instance. So, I would answer the question, yes. I don't think all types of induction require metaphor, no. It seems like induction can be done with meaningless symbols. ... like asking what symbol should follow in this sequence: a 6 g ! 4 q t It may well be more powerful to attach meaning to the symbols as part of your guess. But it isn't necessary. Part of the problem might be that we tend to assume there exists a correct and unique answer to the question. E.g. if I were to _tell_ you that the 8th symbol was definite, just hidden from you. But induction need not assume a definite, correct, unique 8th symbol. Any new symbol derived from the 1st 7 will be an inductive inference. It doesn't matter whether the result is true or false (or pink or whatever). It's still induction. It may be reasonable to claim that no inductive inference can be made, which would imply that there is zero signal in the data at all. But what you're really claiming in that case is that any induction is as good as any other induction. That doesn't prevent some arbitrary inference from happening. It only tells us that we have no a priori way of estimating its likelihood of success. ============================================================ 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
