EricC/Glen -
I'm glad we agree. I made the same points here:
https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2021-November/090981.html
https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2021-November/090983.html
To reiterate, we can't reverse engineer a builder's intention from the artifact.
We can't mind read (even our own).
To go even further, we can't even do a *complete* job of characterizing the
aspects of a thing, the aspects of environments, or the relations between them.
All models are wrong (though some may be useful).
Parallax is needed across all scales and in both directions. Polyphenism is
parallax on the thing. Robustness is parallax on the environment. And
counterfactuals are parallax on their coupling.
All systems (existing within the same light-cone) are "nearly
decomposable" ?
Herb Simon Sez: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1909285
One of the attractive qualities of modal realism is that it addresses both
consistency (through concrete possible worlds) and completeness (through
counterpart theory) in positing and testing various models. The problem becomes
one of discovering which world you inhabit *from the data*, not from whatever
abstracted models you may prefer.
Lewis's Modal Realism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism> is a
new one on me, but very interesting framing. Only skimming the
Wikipedia Article on the topic leaves me with only enough information to
be dangerous... so I am refraining from rattling on about all of my
reactions to it's implications (for me) and in particular some of the
objections listed there to his theory. From this thin introduction I
think I find Yagasawa's extension of possible worlds being distributed
on a modal dimension rather than isolated space-time structures (yet)
more compelling/useful?
And what would Candide <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman>
have to say about this?
On 12/1/21 6:35 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
Me -> We've imputed in all cases. Certainly we can assume artificial systems
were designed for a purpose, but we still don't know what that purpose is without
imputing a model onto that system. And, in both cases, we could proceed to
experiment with the system, in order to test the predictions of the imputed model
and increase our confidence that we have imputed correctly. The ability to do
these things does not distinguish between the two types of system. There are long
and respected scientific traditions using experimental methods to gain confidence
in our understanding of why certain systems were favored by natural selection,
i.e., to determine the manner in which they help the organism better fit its
environment.
Me -> Well.... it might be reification in some sense, but that term usually
implies inaccuracy, which we cannot know in this case without experimentation.
Even with a system we designed ourselves, where we might have a lot of insight
into why we designed the system the way we did, we certainly don't have perfect
knowledge. All we have there is a model of our own behavior to impute off of. Once
again, this doesn't clearly differentiate the two situations. In all of these
situations it is a mistake to uncritically reify our initial intuitions about the
system's purpose.
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