Not otiose, Nick, which is why I opened by saying it is a bit interesting. Although, thank you; I didn’t know the word otiose, and now I have it. I am a tiny bit more adequate person. You have given me two or three such new words over the past couple of years.
I do indeed consider the general class of questions you list below worth reflecting on. Let me postpone saying more in this paragraph, and I might be foolish enough to say to little of something that takes too long to say properly later. I think that, if one wants really to wrestle with these things, the price of admission is what it always is: slogging back through centuries of the hardest efforts of very smart and committed people, to find out whether they have said a lot that is useful on the question. The relevant direction here, I think was cued in Frank’s lines about defining the procedure of “taking a limit”, asking whether that procedure yields a stable number, and if so, then regarding that number as “existing” with respect to the system within which one is arguing. I seem to dimly recall that in the century post-Leibniz, the questions of what could be constructed reliably with some rules of language was where mathematicians spent a lot of time, and when they got comfortable that they had a constructive language whose propositions would carry some weight and not break into inconsistencies, they stopped protesting against taking limits. So one could dig back into all that laborious history, which would require even more digging and reading to figure out how the frame of thought seemed to the authors in their time and in their milieu, and then ask whether anything of your original disquiet remains, or whether it has just sort of dissipated through exhaustion trying to take them all in. The above, of course, uses a crutch, which is proof by construction. Someone who wants to start an argument that really can never be terminated can then ask what is the status of things proved syntactically and not constructively. Then we can go round and round about the axiom of choice and so forth, versus Voevodsky and univalent foundations, or Brouwer and intuitionism. There were a few turns of that wheel of samsara here a few months ago, but I think people ran out of things to comment on and drifted away. I wrote a sort of a long construct, some weeks ago, prompted by one of the email exchanges you and I were part of, which I tried to use in another venue (with the result being a big mess and nothing accomplished), because to use it here would have resulted in a big mess with nothing accomplished. But I guess I can mention it. It was distantly related to the Platonists versus the neoplatonists, to experience monism etc., but not in any narratively clean or monotonic way. The Neoplatonists were onto a good thing, when they realized that if one were going to be a monist, one should stop giving whatever-it-is a name, and just call it “The One”. I think EricC took you to task for appending the unneeded modifier “experience” to the word monist, a year or two ago. Since you either are a monist or you aren’t. Like Robin Williams about being a smoker in Good Will Hunting. Or someone else playing a psychologist in some other movie; I don’t trust my memory. (Side branch about how the Neoplatonists took the thing I didn’t like about Christianity and officially incorporated it with the thing I didn’t like about the Archaeplatonists, where I had all-along believed they were the same thing. But I won’t go down that track here.) Back to the thread: I think you can’t be an experience monist and use Peirce’s notion of truth and still be coherent. That was what my stupidly-composed note had been about, which I didn’t send. If all that “exists” is what “exists within experience”, then if your language purports to have tokens (word definitions, syntactic patterns, etc.) that point at truth-beyond experience, then you have contradicted your monism. There is no notion of truth except my having experienced something as being the case. Hence there cannot be anything for such category words as true and false, or valid and invalid, to point to except what you already contain. That is where I think a true experience monist would be required to have Platonist sympathies. In contrast to the radical-monist position that language cannot contain anything that purports to point at something outside of experience, since there cannot be any referent for such a symbol, of course, Peirce’s notion of things that “prove out” is precisely a claim that it is okay to construct language references that distinguish propositions that will prove out from those that will not, and to use such references to organize your discourse and thought, when your current state of experience does not contain the long run that will (with some precision and some confidence bounds) start to allow you to place propositions into those two categories with the accumulation of history. (Btw, precision and confidence are words that one should lose sleep over as well, if one wants to lose sleep over probability.) Your answer to Frank about “who controls the language” seems to me not at all far from my argument that we have a system-choice decision to make, and the choice _of_ system probably is not made by constructions _within_ one or another of the systems eligible to be chosen. Sitting here typing, I find there is an analogy that makes me feel happy and at ease with all this. It is the smack-down by Teddy Seidenfeld, which Cosma Shalizi pointed me to and agrees with, that there is no “objective Bayesianism”. There is no Platonic Bayesian Prior for which one can argue outside the context of the problem modeled. Priors, like the likelihoods one applies to them, are things in the basket of hypotheses. One looks at their consequences, all together, and then chooses however one will. The point is not to ask God to save you from making a choice. The point is to acknowledge and embrace that you will make a choice, and then accept that all the consequences of it are yours as well. Eric > On Oct 3, 2021, at 12:09 AM, <thompnicks...@gmail.com> > <thompnicks...@gmail.com> wrote: > > EricS, > > Thanks, as always, for your response. Everything you say here is interesting > and relevant except perhaps where you represent me as an otiose idiot. That > makes me want to defend my post, rather than absorb your excellent response. > > Before I stifle my stupid defensive impulse, allow me to ask you a few > questions. Is not an inquiry into the relation between levels of > organization of interest? Are you entirely comfortable with the way that > people talk about interlevel causation? Is it of any interest to you that > the three inference engines of a syllogism, all bridge different levels of > organization? Are not probability theory and calculus both conceptual > bridges across levels organization? Granting, ex hypothesi, that those > bridges are virtuous, does not their success have some implications for > other ways in which we bridge levels of organization, as, say, brain/behavior > reflections, or the relation between behavior acts and behavior motivations? > Is metaphor thinking a way of crossing directly from one particular to > another without crossing any such bridges? Is metaphor how we really think > and is, therefore, logical analysis a poor proxy for virtuous thought. > > Thinking as an experience monist, everything that is is experience and all > experiences are of other experiences. So, levels of organization are > experiences that have to be assembled out of other experiences. Many MANY > years ago when I was working on Brown Thrasher song we tried to automate the > classification of the units of the song. The birds can sing for hours and > rarely repeat themselves, but when they do, they do so very precisely. So > they aren’t just improvising. To this day I don’t think anybody has figured > out what they are doing. When I quit, it wasn’t even clear we were parsing > the stream of sound into the right units! > > The stream of experience is like that. The structures of The World that > Frank talks about are all structures of experience, validatable only by > subsequent experiences. We animals are not truth seekers, we are > consequence anticipators, and if there is any truth or reality, it must be in > the power those experiences we experience as true or real to anticipate > future experiences. How does the stream of experience come to be organized? > > > These are the kinds of questions I am pursuing, here, and, lacking graduate > students, a laboratory, work study students, courses to teach, colleagues to > interact with, here is really the only place I can pursue them. If the > assumptions I bring to bear that cause me ask these questions are too naïve, > onerous, or outlandish to entertain, then for god’s sake don’t try to > shoulder them. You have done me many kindnesses in the past and you can > walk away from my confusions any moment without any debts whatsoever. The > same is true, of course, of Jon, EricC, Glen or any of the kind folk who have > helped me think over these years. > > Anyway, thanks for your very relevant comments. I shall study them carefully > tomorrow when I get up. > > All the best, > > Nick > > > > Nick Thompson > thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> > https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ > <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,FlKil6Oo-OcZgl78FjunjqYCa03v-EeN8BN8CwdDyjLHD_jatCwLzinRfqOjRK1t-unkmR727-kN4rAlm7dj8TLyUUpgoZZ9C6yLfABMPDC4&typo=1> > > From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> On > Behalf Of David Eric Smith > Sent: Saturday, October 2, 2021 9:47 PM > To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com > <mailto:friam@redfish.com>> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Newborn Heart Rate > > I feel in this, Frank, like your comments will fall on deaf ears, for an > interesting reason. The thing you summarize for Nick is precisely the thing > he wants to object to. > > It seems to me that Nick believes that Zeno’s arrow paradox, > https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/ > <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/> > or something close to it, defines in some Platonic way the “right rules of > thought”. Whatever Zeno’s rules of argument make ill-defined, we should > somehow believe isn’t really properly conceived, and _cannot be_. > > If I were to tell Nick (replace “momentum” where he has “acceleration” in the > sentences below), that in 1833, Hamilton took us beyond all the things Zeno > can’t do, by writing the states of objects in a 2-coordinate space, where one > coordinate is position and the other is momentum, and the two coordinates are > _independent of one another_, and in some important sense _symmetric_ and > _peer_ attributes of the object, I would not be addressing his objection to > calculus (which does define these things in limits as you say below), but I > would be arguing that physics may suggest the limit-definition from calculus > is not the most fundamental one. If I were then to tell Nick that the > duality between being at a place (all position) and being in a state of > motion (all momentum) became in quantum mechanics the duality between > standing and traveling waves, and that we understand their independence and > peer status even more thoroughly in quantum mechanics than in Hamilton’s > classical mechanics, I would still not be addressing the unquiet about > calculus, but would perhaps be asserting that physical reality is even > further from needing its in-the-limit definitions. > > But the part of this that is interesting (to me) is: why is this > Nick-as-I-perceive-him (which the real Nick may or may not be) convinced that > Zeno’s rules of argument are somehow the defined “right rules of thought”? > Why is anyone convinced that he knows ahead of time what rules are the right > rules of thought for anything? Why are we not somehow always aware that all > these words and rules come up together somehow as parts of a > mutually-interdependent system, really “pulled up by their own bootstraps” in > a much more perfect way than the way that metaphor is used for the startup of > an operating system in a computer? And if we were thus aware of the somehow > out-of-nowhere character of the bootstrapped systems within which all the > terms and rules take their meaning, how would it then change the way we think > about choosing which one to use? The Platonists in their own words b believe > that truth somehow comes to them through the divine channel of thought from a > reality beyond experience. I think they are more fond (in the original sense > of “crazy”) of their own preconceived notions than they are of the complexity > of experience, and mistake their preconceived notions for a more ultimate and > perfect, but in any case preferable “reality”. If we get out of that habit, > how does our style of argument for what constitutes right thought change? > > Neither here nor there to this thread, I did want to mention some weeks ago > that I really liked Glen’s formulation of The Will to Simulation. I think > Nietzsche would have appreciated its irreverence, though he would have been > too vain and obstreperous to contribute anything to it. > > Eric > > p.s. On the above, I could have stayed with Nick’s original query about > acceleration, and gone to physics. I could have spoken of his very physical > self, standing here on the surface of the Earth, and accelerated away from > the world-line of an inertial observer in general relativity by the fact that > the Earth is in the way of his free fall. The gravity that he feels in the > seat of his pants is the acceleration that is a property of his state. But > it was simpler to refer to momentum and to go back to Hamiltonian mechanics, > which has an additional century behind it, and which really marked the turn > away from Zeno and a definition of velocities in terms of derivatives by > Lagrange, and toward a recognition of momentum as an inherent property. If > one can see that clearly and with familiarity, it is then a straightforward > next step to say that Mach’s principle just said “if frame-independence > applies to velocity, then why not also to rotational velocity, and what then > do we do about acceleration”, and you get the case from general relativity. > > >> On Oct 1, 2021, at 10:00 PM, Frank Wimberly <wimber...@gmail.com >> <mailto:wimber...@gmail.com>> wrote: >> >> Nick, i hope this helps. Given a fair die that hasn't been thrown the >> probability that it will come up 2 (or any of the other particular values) >> on the next throw is 1/6 by definition of fair. Given that it has been >> thrown and ceterus paribus the a posteriori probability that it shows 2 >> given that it does is 1.0. In that case the probabilities of each of the >> other values is 0.0. >> >> The acceleration of an object with constant velocity is 0.0. If the >> velocity is changing the acceleration is the instantaneous change in >> velocity the knowledge of which is limited by the ability to measure that. >> The acceleration of an object whose velocity is described by a closed form >> mathematical function is the derivative of that function as we learned in >> calculus. The derivative is defined by limits. This is theoretical and >> approximates what happens in the physical world. >> >> Questions and comments are welcome. >> >> Frank >> >> >> --- >> Frank C. Wimberly >> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz, >> Santa Fe, NM 87505 >> >> 505 670-9918 >> Santa Fe, NM >> >> On Fri, Oct 1, 2021, 7:21 PM <thompnicks...@gmail.com >> <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> wrote: >>> I thought the conversation about probability, category errors, and crossing >>> boundaries between levels of organization was interesting and I was sorry I >>> had to leave it. I want to say that to speak a die as having a >>> probability of 1/6 of coming up 6 on a single throw is a category error >>> because it is not a property that can be displayed on a single throw. It’s >>> the same worry that I have often deployed about the calculus. If we take >>> the idea of a category error seriously, then acceleration is just not the >>> sort of thing an object can have at an instant. But just as clearly as >>> this argument is too strong – lots of very nice longstanding bridges have >>> been built with the calculus – so the argument is also too strong with >>> respect to probability – lots of nice atom bombs have been built with >>> probability theory … or something. >>> >>> I care about this because my standard account of such concepts as “wanting” >>> is that they are properties of the population of responses to an object, >>> not properties of any one of those responses. We encounter the same >>> problem with anecdotes and newspaper photographs designed to illustrate >>> some general fact. If the generally fact is that “very few of the >>> immigrants at the southern border are well treated” a single photograph >>> looking peaked or hungry is irrelevant. Equally irrelevant would be a >>> picture of a bright eyed kid sitting in the lap of a border patrol officer >>> eating a hot-fudge sundae. >>> >>> This makes me wonder about one of the foundations of psychological >>> research, the statistics of inference, which I think Peirce invented. Let >>> a coin be thrown 10 times and each time come up heads. What I think Peirce >>> would have me conclude is that that coin is unlikely to be drawn from a >>> population of fair throws of a fair coin. But, of coure, what we are >>> likely to conclude is that “this coin is not fair.” But that could be as >>> misguided, couldn’t it, as concluding that the kid in the lap of the border >>> patrol officers is being mistreated. >>> >>> I apologize, once more, for sharing my comfusions with you. >>> >>> n >>> >>> Nick Thompson >>> thompnicks...@gmail.com <mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com> >>> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ >>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwordpress.clarku.edu%2fnthompson%2f&c=E,1,QU0qVpqNOoJiPM24Dv11INL-P7InBOIA4z4LOnpttneeWXYwPuFzZKWaVU3KPxC8ObCG7JECy2fbQeuL-V9-2OsvQN3I7mXpu9mzsoPaIE0,&typo=1> >>> >>> From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> >>> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly >>> Sent: Friday, October 1, 2021 6:46 PM >>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com >>> <mailto:friam@redfish.com>> >>> Subject: [FRIAM] Newborn Heart Rate >>> >>> >>> https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/61/1/119 >>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fpediatrics.aappublications.org%2fcontent%2f61%2f1%2f119&c=E,1,uD1tIhc7c-0wZqgMnI5_Ki1-cJ9QDa1EyaSQIuM5xQO8giKGtKM8z1rtfEnJ33KUkPyECbG92OSX1Pt-uIL6rgVLiylCxIbiMASMUnV7SEjwSw,,&typo=1> >>> >>> This is for those who attended this morning's vFriam meeting. I was >>> Schachter's colleague, among a couple of others. >>> >>> >>> --- >>> Frank C. 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