At 04:45 AM 11/4/2014, Frederik Stjernfelt wrote:
I stumbled over a text bite [Edwina and Howard]
from mid-October which gave me the idea that
there may be some terminological confusion at
the root of some of our discussions.
HP: I'm sure that is the case. We also have a
cultural difference over the creative vs.
normative functions of epistemologies. I don't
expect to resolve the difference, but at least is should be
recognized and hopefully understood.
HP (10/20/14): More generally, do the symbols
of the genes code only nominalistically for
specific amino acids, or do they code
realistically foruniversal functions like
catalysis and self-replication? The evidence
seems clear that gene symbols code for both, as
well as many other conditional and control
activites that can't be called either specific or universal.
FS: Here, Howard couples nominalism/ realism
with specific/ universal. But this is strange to me.
HP: Let me try to explain why a physicist's
"opportunistic epistemology" seems strange to
most philosophers. What I was trying to point out
is that for physicists the object of the symbolic
information in the genetic sequences, or in any
theory, cannot be restricted by, or predisposed
to, any general exclusive epistemological
interpretations, such as exclusive realism or
exclusive nominalism (or exclusive idealism,
empiricism, constructivism, materialism, and on and on).
Why not? Because the issue always comes down to:
What is real and what exists? The problem is that
relativity and quantum theory do not allow a
single logical or sensible model of reality.
Feynmann: "We choose to examine a phenomenon
which is impossible, absolutely impossible, to
explain in any classical way, and which has in it
the heart of quantum mechanics."
Now I agree that you should not be doing physics,
but even the classical philosophical concepts of
reality are empirically undecidable visions. This
is most directly evidenced by the fact that
philosophers have been unable to decide on any
single vision in spite of >2500 years of vigorous
disputations over all sorts of epistemologies;
and historically it appears that almost any
experience can be envisioned by almost any epistemology.
However, I emphasize that lack of a universal
epistemology does not mean that each specific
case (theory, model, proposition, etc.) can not
have one or more particular epistemologies that
are consistent with the evidence for that case,
and that may add creative meanings to the model.
Hence, the "opportunism," (Presently in QM there
are at least six, e.g., see
<http://www.amazon.com/Elegance-Enigma-Interviews-Frontiers-Collection/dp/3642208797/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415244433&sr=1-3&keywords=schlosshauer>Elegance
and Enigma, p. 19 et seq.)
That is why I keep quoting Hertz ("As a matter
of fact, we do not know, nor have we any means of
knowing, whether our conception of things are in
conformity with them . . . etc."), and
also Poincaré, Einstein, Born, Polanyi, and even
Peirce as a scientist: "the power that connects
the conditions of the mathematicians diagram with
the relations he observes in it is just as occult
and mysterious to us as the power of Nature that
brings about the results of the chemical
experiment." The obvious question is: If the
diagram's relation to reality is that "occult and
mysterious," how can you claim to know for sure
what the "real" relation is? That mystery is one
reason we invent so many epistemologies.
FS: Conversely, realism could not be the claim
that signs refer to the most general functions as in Howard's quote.
HP: I don't know what you mean by "most general
function"? I mentioned self-replication. Is that
not a general function of life? I don't see what
difference a belief in realism or nominalism
would make in understanding von Neumann's
self-replication model or in understanding a living cell.
FS: Realism is the claim that some predicates
(or "codes") refer to real structures of the
world ("round" has its fundamentum in re in the
existence of round objects, "iron" has its
fundamentum in re in the existence of objects made out of iron).
HP: I think Nominalists could just as
persuasively argue that round objects (i.e.,
circles) do not exist in Nature, and that iron is
just a name classifying certain useful
collections of fundamental particles. My point is
that in both cases, none of the key words are
unambiguously defined, and the argument is not decidable and goes nowhere.
FS: But I think I can see where Howard is
heading in the quote. I think he is right that
gene symbols code for functions both on a
specific and a more general level - on several
levels of generality, as it were. But all
functions are general.This lies in the fact that
several, numerically distinct events or processes can serve the same function.
HP: All our models of the structure-function
relation are many-to-many. One function can be
performed by many structures, and one structure
can perform many functions. But who or what
decides if a structure is functional?
FS: As with Peirce's example : baking an apple
pie, you (and the recipe you follow) have only a
general conception of the cake you intend. Many
different, idividual baking processes may
satisfy the recipe. The recipe speaks of, e.g.
"4 apples", not about "4 particular,
identifiable apples found on a particular branch
on a particular tree in a particular orchard in
Massachusetts at a particular date". - But the resulting cake is not general.
HP: I think that is how I would view it. I would
agree there are many ways to bake a cake, and
recipes can have all degrees of generality, but I
call any recipe vehicle real. I say my material
brain's image of the cake is also real, but the
cake itself does not exist until I execute the
recipe or the image. Fortunately, cooks do not think this way.
Howard
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