Re: [PEIRCE-L] Theories and Realism (was Natural Propositions)
Sungchul, I lack the background in math and physics and other sciences to make any serious assessment of your conjectures about the recurrence of Planck-like distributions in various fields. From what I've read or skimmed over the years, I'd say that most likenesses among distributions turn out not to reflect common causal roots and often reflect a limited mathematical analogy involved in the compared processes. I didn't see a wave-particle analogy in your previously offered idea that one classificatory axis of signs is about their wave nature and the other classificatory axis is about their particle nature. It's really not as if the belonging to many trichotomies at once is wavelike, while being just one of three kinds of sign in any given trichotomy is particle-like. Or vice versa (I forget which way you did it). The only quantumlike thing that I've noticed in Peirce is the idea that something qualitative-of-feeling is singular if one reacts with it, and is general if one reflects on it, but remains an indefinite quality of feeling if one merely contemplates it passively, 'feels' it. In a classical perspective, _/singular/_ and _/general/_ constitute an exclusive alternative, and an undecidedness between them would merely reflect happenstance ignorance, and would not, again in a classical perspective, be a positive phenomenon reflecting necessary, in-principle ignorance, where quality is like a bit of feasibilism or probabilism that has managed to squeeze through the needle's eye of the present by avoiding environmental interaction like a wave passing through a double slit so that an interference pattern gets imprinted onto a photographic plate. Yet, on the non-classical supposition that quality of feeling is like such an interference pattern, then quality of feeling should be like a positive undecidedness among singulars, not like a positive undecidedness between singular and general. I'm quite skeptical of the idea that logical quantities such as singular and general are like slits side by side in a barrier, or like dot-sharp hits on a screen. Anyway in some sense maybe you could say that the first member of each sign trichotomy resembles the interference-pattern-like, and the second resembles the particle-like. I don't know what the third one would resemble, maybe the wavelike (or 'wave-packet'-like) and probability-like, in some undivided way. But this is all very airy. Best, Ben On 10/3/2014 7:41 AM, Sungchul Ji wrote: Ben wrote: (100314-1) Curiously, there seems more realism, more of an idea of finding the objective truth about generals that relate waves/particles than about the singulars or particulars, the waves/particles themselves (which are not particularly individualistic anyway), especially when the objective truth about a given wave/particle is supposed to be classical and observer-independent, not quantum. Feynman's attitude seems to have been, give up trying to understand it classically. One can imagine Peirce surveying the scene with an amused glint in his eye. Not only was he a modal realist, he associated individuality with falsity. I am coming to the conclusion that the reason the Planck distribution (PD), y = (a/(Ax + B)^5/Exp(b/(Ax + B)) -- 1), fits so many fat tailed distributions found in all fields of natural sciences and linguistics (atomic physics, protein physics, cell biology, immunology, brain physiology, glottometrics, and cosmology; see the figure attached) may be because of the universality of the wave-particle duality. This conclusion is primarily motivated by the structure of PD, which traces back to the Planck radiation equation, u(lambda, T) = (2pihc^2/lambda^5)/exp(hc/kT lambda) -- 1), which is the product of two terms, the first reflecting the number of standing waves per unit volume and the second the average energy of the standing waves. Also it makes a physical sense to me -- standing waves in atoms are called atomic orbitals, and standing waves can be implicated in protein folds, enzymic catalysis, metabolite concentration gradients in cells, brain functions including decision-making, word formation inside the mouth cavity, and within the volume of the universe. It is interesting to point out that PD and the Menzerath-Altmann law, y = Ax^b exp(-c/x), discovered in glottometrics in the 1950's (?), are functionally equivalent, since they both fit the same data sets (see a, b, f, g, j, k, l, and m in Figure 9 attached), and this may be because they are both the products of a power law and an exponential function. This conclusion seems consistent with the postulate I proposed in 2012 that the wave-particle complementarity operates not only in physics, but also in biology and semiotics (see Table 2.13 in the chapter entitled Complementarity, under Publications Book Chapters at conformon.net). Any comments or critiques would be appreciated. With
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Theories and Realism (was Natural Propositions)
On Oct 3, 2014, at 5:41 AM, Sungchul Ji s...@rci.rutgers.edu wrote: This conclusion seems consistent with the postulate I proposed in 2012 that the wave-particle complementarity operates not only in physics, but also in biology and semiotics (see Table 2.13 in the chapter entitled Complementarity, under Publications Book Chapters at conformon.net http://conformon.net/). I’m not sure what it would mean for complementarity to operate in semiotics. I’d imagine though that the Planck Distribution would arise in other systems based purely on statistical mechanics and not necessarily due to a causal connection to wave/particle duality. After all the distribution takes the form it does in large mart due to how it’s related to thermal average. But I honestly haven’t studied this issue at all so I don’t have much to say. That’s just a guess off the top of my head. After all lots of classical systems are naturally “quantized” without it being due to quantum mechanics. - PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on Reply List or Reply All to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Theories and Realism (was Natural Propositions)
On Oct 1, 2014, at 3:00 PM, Howard Pattee hpat...@roadrunner.com wrote: On Oct 1, 2014, at 4:00 AM, John Collier wrote: I think that it is a given that for any realist position there is a nominalist position in the contemporary sense that can fit the same assent structure. Typically one is realist about some things, but not others (for example one can be a realist about physical laws but not numbers, or vice versa). HP: That is the way most physicists think (if they think about it). They don't make a big point of it one way or the other because any model must be empirically testable. Epistemological opinions do not provide a test. I think there’s definitely a subgroup that does worry about such things. Sometimes in an informed way (I knew many physicists who also got philosophy degrees or at least took a lot of classes). More often by approaching it in a more naive way. I think asking what it means to test is an important consideration though that not enough physicists ask. At 02:03 PM 10/1/2014, Clark Goble wrote: Its also interesting in that even people Id largely call nominalist in science still tend to have a dodge regarding the fundamental laws of physics that govern dynamics within fundamental stuff. Those they treat as real and in that sense they arent nominalists. However in practice theyre very nominalist towards everything else. i.e. dont accept mathematical abstract entities, colors, qualia or so forth as mind independent. HP: That is the case. But why do you call this a dodge? In physics, Natural Law is a category based on its principles of invariance and symmetry to obtain maximum objectivity. Laws are expressed in the formal language of mathematics, but this language is a different category. It has many types of axioms and rules that are not dependent on, or limited by, Natural Laws (except for information processing satisfying the 2nd Law). I think it a dodge because they think they are answering a question when they really haven’t. Further that problem that the fundamental laws are treated differently from everything else tends to cause problems when some physicists critique others. That is they create distinctions they don’t properly hold to themselves. Again I can think of many examples of this among popular physics books which engage somewhat with philosophy. One recent one purportedly dealing with why there’s something rather than nothing is a good example. But that’s all a bit tangental to the dicisign discussion. CG: But its also tricky in that most scientists arent philosophically informed and thus are ignorant of many subtle issues. Incoherent beliefs that might bug a philosopher are thus quite common. HP: The European founders of modern physics had philosophy in their curriculum. As C. P. Snow would have said, most philosophers arent scientifically informed and thus are ignorant of many subtle issues. Incoherent beliefs that might bug a scientist are thus quite common. Yes at one time physicists were quite sophisticated philosophically. It’s much more in the post-war era that things changed. I’d like to see it change back. I think Lee Smolin in particular has argued persuasively for this. Of course philosophers of science have argued for this as well for some time. I also think philosophers should study more science. So I’m an equal opportunity critic here. I do think this is a bit different an issue than what Snow was going on about though. - PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on Reply List or Reply All to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Theories and Realism (was Natural Propositions)
Clark, list, Maybe I've underestimated the amount of instrumentalism - it's hard for me to discern how seriously people take their own ideas of 'useful fictions' in practice. Often enough the phrase 'useful fiction' seems a cynical or self-deprecating way to say enlightening approximation. But not always. Also, I forgot about cases of formalisms that can be dispensed with in principle and are used for calculations - as when it is said that, in physics, gauge invariance reflects a redundancy in the description, so it's more mathematical than especially physical, while Lorentz invariance is indispensable and physical. I'm at sea with gauge invariance, the math is quite beyond me. However, the distinction between dispensable and indispensable formalisms, and the idea that some physical-theoretical invariance is more especially physical than another physical-theoretical invariance, seems harder for a pure instrumentalism about laws to deal with. But I've gotten in over my head. Curiously, there seems more realism, more of an idea of finding the objective truth about generals that relate waves/particles than about the singulars or particulars, the waves/particles themselves (which are not particularly individualistic anyway), especially when the objective truth about a given wave/particle is supposed to be classical and observer-independent, not quantum. Feynman's attitude seems to have been, give up trying to understand it classically. One can imagine Peirce surveying the scene with an amused glint in his eye. Not only was he a modal realist, he associated individuality with falsity. Best, Ben On 9/30/2014 5:49 PM, Clark Goble wrote: (Changed the thread title since we’ve drifted far from natural propositions) On Sep 30, 2014, at 11:58 AM, Benjamin Udell bud...@nyc.rr.com mailto:bud...@nyc.rr.com wrote: [CG] Whether the “nearly real” is good enough is a reasonable question. Like you, I see it as good enough, but I think there are important caveats one has to make which is why I mentioned that on practical grounds for many entities they act like instrumentalists. [End quote] I'd say that they're acting as fallibilists. They may also hold that a theory should be evaluated not for the plausibility of its assumptions but the only for the success of its predictions, and it's more tempting to call that approach instrumentalism. Some have even held that it's okay and even necessary for the assumptions to be 'descriptively false'. While related to fallibilism I’m not sure that’s a good term. Fallibilists in practice just reject epistemic foundationalism. Since there are very few foundationalists left I’m not sure that gets us much. (I only see them among theological oriented philosophers doing epistemology - but perhaps there are a few atheist foundationalists left) Now certainly most scientists - especially since positivism largely died - are fallibiliist. I think what I’m talking about goes beyond that. I think many (wish there was a poll for this) physicists view laws like the ideal gas law or even Newton’s Laws as useful fictions. But they may well be a realist towards other phenomena laws or structures. That whole “useful fiction” bit really goes well beyond fallibilism. I vaguely remember Peirce discussing something like this. I’ll try and look it up tonight. It was relative to measurement and simplifications one makes in physics and chemistry. Really that’s the issue at hand. When is a first or second order approximation good enough? (e.g. analogy to series expansion with Fourier, Bessel, or Spherical Bessel functions) Now, that could mean merely seemingly false by omission of factors that one would have thought to be pertinent, and I do think that is part of it. Yes, the first and second order approximation gets at that. But it can also apply to simplified boundary conditions or, as with Newton’s Laws, discovering laws one thought were universal were actually just an approximation in certain conditions. i.e. not fundamental. Still, I'd call that fallibilism, not instrumentalism, although it reflects the spirit of some who call themselves instrumentalists. I think the difference, even beyond the useful fiction, is over what generals one can legitimately precind and what are more “accidental” simplifications. To go back to the series expansion analogy often if you find a large term in the first or second term and the following terms are very small, you feel legitimate to say this is a real structure. However for some simplifications you don’t think the resultant structures are really there but that you are just making a model that gives you useful answers. For even a scholastic realist of the Perigean sort I think we can make a distinction there between useful fictions and mind independent structures that may be obscured due to complexity. So to return to my other example, one might see the ideal gas
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Theories and Realism (was Natural Propositions)
On Oct 1, 2014, at 8:50 AM, Benjamin Udell bud...@nyc.rr.com wrote: Maybe I've underestimated the amount of instrumentalism - it's hard for me to discern how seriously people take their own ideas of 'useful fictions' in practice. And I should add my own important caveat. I’m simply not been in science for a long time now. Things can change rapidly. I’m more going by past conversations especially from when I worked at Los Alamos. There’s lots of ways my own experiences may not be representative of what’s going on. Curiously, there seems more realism, more of an idea of finding the objective truth about generals that relate waves/particles than about the singulars or particulars, the waves/particles themselves (which are not particularly individualistic anyway), especially when the objective truth about a given wave/particle is supposed to be classical and observer-independent, not quantum. Feynman's attitude seems to have been, give up trying to understand it classically. One can imagine Peirce surveying the scene with an amused glint in his eye. Not only was he a modal realist, he associated individuality with falsity. I think this is right - although with waves the question becomes whether waves (or more accurately a quantum field) is the individual and not “particles” which are emergent. That is a place where I think all this gets tricky relative to nominalism. Often the divide between particulars and generals reverses in odd ways in fundamental physics. That can make discussion of nominalism tricky. - PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on Reply List or Reply All to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Theories and Realism (was Natural Propositions)
(Changed title to distinguish it from Natural Propositions thread and to match my previously renamed posts) On Oct 1, 2014, at 4:00 AM, John Collier colli...@ukzn.ac.za wrote: The more contemporary nominalism is based in a view of language and thought (which is understood on a linguistic model), and pays special attention to what we can sense. Quine, for example, calls himself a physicalist because he believes that our knowledge comes from the senses, which are physical (as a pragmatist, he shares this with Peirce, except Peirce regards them as external, not physical, but that might be only a difference in terminology). Quine and Goodman believe that there are no propositions, only instances of sentences or statements, and these are related not by identity of some sort (being of the identical kind) but just by being similar. Although with Quine it gets even trickier given how he views quantifiers. I’d say that in many ways he’s not a nominalist because he seems to accept non-mental mathematical entities. Your point about deflationary theories with regards to propositions is interesting and well made though. I’ve often wondered if Peirce’s dicisign doesn’t hold some similarities with deflationary accounts. BTW - speaking of Quine he actually has an essay where he responds to people pointing out parallels between himself and Peirce. I came upon it by accident in an used bookstore. He doesn’t think he parallels Peirce much. However it’s also clear he hasn’t read much Peirce either and is largely going by “received views of Peirce.” This was before the Peirce scholarship renaissance so I’m not sure his views on pragmatism are that helpful. Still it’s an interesting little paper. The big issue for the contemporary nominalist, as Russell pointed out, is whether similarity is sufficient first of all, and second, whether it works. He argued that similarity, to work, must be a universal, so the nominalist project, clever though it is, falls apart from the get go. He then argues that once you accept this argument, that it is obvious that similarity is not sufficient, since it raise the question, similarity of what? Everything is similar to everything else in some respect, so we need respects. (I read this argument in a mimeographed paper of Russell's at UCLA, and I am not sure that it was ever published.) Was this during Russell’s bundle theory period? It is an interesting argument. The reason why I go into this is that it has some bearing on how to evaluate all of the questions. I think that it is a given that for any realist position there is a nominalist position in the contemporary sense that can fit the same assent structure. Typically one is realist about some things, but not others (for example one can be a realist about physical laws but not numbers, or vice versa). So contemporary nominalism, if it works at all, will work for all claims of reality involving a specific external existence. This is an important point I think. The realism vs. nominalism debate in contemporary philosophy (or at least since WWII) can’t be separated from the issue of realism towards what? In that sense it’s different from the medieval debates. I first came to the realism debate via Dummett’s Truth and Other Enigmas back in college. But the way he cast the debate, especially in his papers “Nominalism” and “Realism,” tends to make things more confused rather than clearer IMO. I’ve not followed the argument much in contemporary analytic philosophy since college so I don’t know if that’s still a problem. (Peirce spoiled me) This isn't so for traditional nominalism, since they assume the existence external conditions that make claims about particulars, at least, true. Similarity is likewise and external condition. I think nominalism was much easier when you could point to something like the monodology (or its more or less equivalence in Spinoza) or the more Cartesian views of extended space with properties. In contemporary physics everything is much more complex, which may be why Howard thought those positions in physics entailed scholastic realism. It’s also interesting in that even people I’d largely call nominalist in science still tend to have a “dodge” regarding the fundamental laws of physics that govern dynamics within fundamental stuff. Those they treat as real and in that sense they aren’t nominalists. However in practice they’re very nominalist towards everything else. i.e. don’t accept mathematical abstract entities, colors, qualia or so forth as mind independent. But it’s also tricky in that most scientists aren’t philosophically informed and thus are ignorant of many subtle issues. Incoherent beliefs that might bug a philosopher are thus quite common. - PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on Reply List or Reply All to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Theories and Realism (was Natural Propositions)
On Oct 1, 2014, at 4:00 AM, John Collier wrote: I think that it is a given that for any realist position there is a nominalist position in the contemporary sense that can fit the same assent structure. Typically one is realist about some things, but not others (for example one can be a realist about physical laws but not numbers, or vice versa). HP: That is the way most physicists think (if they think about it). They don't make a big point of it one way or the other because any model must be empirically testable. Epistemological opinions do not provide a test. JC: So contemporary nominalism, if it works at all, will work for all claims of reality involving a specific external existence. HP: Physicists feel no need to stick with one or the other. They are unprincipled epistemic opportunists. At 02:03 PM 10/1/2014, Clark Goble wrote: It's also interesting in that even people I'd largely call nominalist in science still tend to have a dodge regarding the fundamental laws of physics that govern dynamics within fundamental stuff. Those they treat as real and in that sense they aren't nominalists. However in practice they're very nominalist towards everything else. i.e. don't accept mathematical abstract entities, colors, qualia or so forth as mind independent. HP: That is the case. But why do you call this a dodge? In physics, Natural Law is a category based on its principles of invariance and symmetry to obtain maximum objectivity. Laws are expressed in the formal language of mathematics, but this language is a different category. It has many types of axioms and rules that are not dependent on, or limited by, Natural Laws (except for information processing satisfying the 2nd Law). CG: But it's also tricky in that most scientists aren't philosophically informed and thus are ignorant of many subtle issues. Incoherent beliefs that might bug a philosopher are thus quite common. HP: The European founders of modern physics had philosophy in their curriculum. As C. P. Snow would have said, most philosophers aren't scientifically informed and thus are ignorant of many subtle issues. Incoherent beliefs that might bug a scientist are thus quite common. Howard - PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on Reply List or Reply All to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm . - PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on Reply List or Reply All to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
