Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Steve Smith wrote at 03/25/2013 03:42 PM: I prefer Pamela's description of him being *careless* with references as opposed to my own use of the *honest*. He does cite Rosen in this paper: Towards a Post Reductionist Science: The Open Universe http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.2492 which makes the absence of a citation in the later paper even more conspicuous. It reminds me of the answer Martin Davis gave me for not mentioning Tarski in his Engines of Logic. (Great book, by the way.) I can't find the exact quote, but it was something like He wasn't part of the story I was trying to tell. But it also reminds me of one of my favorite aphorisms: Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. -- attributed to Napolean Bonaparte -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. -- Mark Twain 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Maybe it's better to say Post-Newtonian science thinks rather in terms of the emergence of possibility. Merle On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 9:46 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: “ Science really doesn't think in terms of causes.” ** ** Really, Russ? That’s quite a sweeper, isn’t it? ** ** Nick ** ** *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Russ Abbott *Sent:* Monday, March 25, 2013 4:45 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice ** ** It seems strange to me that Kauffman would focus on cause. (I'll admit that I got that from just looking at the start of the paper. Perhaps he goes in a different direction.) Science really doesn't think in terms of causes. As I understand it science thinks in terms of forces, particles, etc., and equations that relate them, but not causes. This is especially noticeable when considering that the equations work forwards and backwards. If one wants to think in terms of a forward (in time) cause that implies a parallel backward (in time) cause, which makes the whole cause notion much less useful. ** ** Steve, you mentioned Lamarkian evolution. I'd be very interested to find out more about some of your daughter's examples. *-- Russ Abbott* *_* * Professor, Computer Science* * California State University, Los Angeles* ** ** * My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688* * Google voice: 747-999-5105* Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/ * vita: **sites.google.com/site/russabbott/*http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ CS Wiki http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/ and the courses I teach *_* ** ** On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 3:42 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Gary/Pamela/(Stephen, Carl, Eric, ...) - I know several (many?) on this list know Stu better than I... so I apologize if I sounded overly critical. I prefer Pamela's description of him being *careless* with references as opposed to my own use of the *honest*. I also admit that I do not know if he sees himself as a rock-star... that is perhaps the default category I put people in who are simultaneously *good*, *self-possessed* and *charismatic*. I actually *like* most rock stars (within reason) even if I might not care for their music. As an aside... does anyone remember Chris Langton appearing in Rolling Stone (CA 1990?)... I searched their archives and did not find any references (nor on the internet at large?). I remember the article including a sexed-up spread of him in front of a Connection Machine? I suppose I could be hallucinating or have come from an alternate history? I also smiled at your term demigod as I often use Titans to describe the pantheon of my wife's sibling group... she is oldest of 8 *mostly* high functioning, *very* charismatic, *definitely* self-possessed siblings. They all revered their father who was a humble but charismatic physics professor. None of them took up science per se, though one has a PhD in psychology. I would not use *rock star* to describe any of their self-image, though there is one who insists he *is* Elvis... and sometimes we are tempted to believe him. There are definitely characters right out of Greek, Roman, Norse, even Hindu mythology in her family... My wife is Kali *and* Loki rolled into one I think. I have always been inspired by Kauffman's ideas as best I could understand them, which has been highly variable, depending on the circumstance. This says more about me than about Stu. I read his lecture notes in the late-nineties... the ones which ultimately became the core of _Investigations_ (or so it seemed to me). I had read _OofO_ and _At Home in the Universe_ previously. It may have been coincidence or something stronger like kismet that I read Investigations interleaved with my reading of Christopher Alexander's (Pattern Language fame) _Notes on the Synthesis of Form_ with D'Arcy Thompson's _On Growth and Form_ as backup reference. I was traveling lightly in New Zealand at the time with none of my usual distractions nagging me. It was a month of deep thought informed by Alexander and Kauffman equally. My nature is to be guarded around people with significant charisma (and me married into aforementioned pantheon!). I appreciate the need for and the value of the persuasive and the self-confident, even in the realm of science where ideas *by definition* must stand on their own. There is value for those who can bring us to *want* to believe enough to put in the hard work to believe things on their own merits. Unfortunately that might be the dividing line between science and Science(tm). I suppose I mistrust those who appear
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
This list constantly reminds me that we are all, thankfully, different. Offhand, I can not think of a topic that I would be more violently disinterested in than the philosophy of causation. Unless maybe it would be the philosophy of complexity, or perhaps the philosophy of agent-based model design. But I acknowledge that a not small fraction of you eat this stuff up, so please: have at it! --Doug On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Frank Wimberly wimber...@gmail.comwrote: Nick, ** ** Here is the complete citation: ** ** Glymour, C., and Wimberly, F. Actual Causes and Thought Experiments, in Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke, Harry S. Silverstein (eds.), Causation and Explanation: Topics in Contemporary Philosopy, MIT Press, Cambridge, July 2007. ** ** I’ll buy a cup of coffee for anyone who reads the whole paper. The book contains a number of papers by luminaries in the area of philosophy of causation including Patrick Suppes, Nancy Cartwright, Christopher Hitchcock, etc. I was surprised to find that it’s available on Google books: *http://tinyurl.com/d9l44jh * * * Frank** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz Santa Fe, NM 87505 ** ** wimber...@gmail.com wimbe...@cal.berkeley.edu Phone: (505) 995-8715 Cell: (505) 670-9918 ** ** *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Nicholas Thompson *Sent:* Monday, March 25, 2013 11:57 PM *To:* russ.abb...@gmail.com; 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice ** ** Russ, ** ** I don’t know wtf I am. I have always thought of myself as a scientist, but I am sure that many on this list have their doubts. I am certainly not a “hard” scientist. ** ** I was hoping by my comment to lure you into a more lengthy explication of the idea that real scientists don’t think in terms of causes. But now you have smoked me out instead, so here goes. ** ** Many of the *philosophers* I know, from time to time like to talk about causality as if it were a sophomoric illusion, citing Hume, or some sort of weird quantum theory. But that does not keep them from using causal reasoning freely in their everyday lives. I have never heard a philosopher who was reluctant to say things like “my car stalled because it ran out of gas”. I think what they mean when they deny causality is the denial of something that, as a behaviorist, I never thought to entertain: some deep gear-and-cog mechanism lurking behind experience. If one once concedes that all one means by causality is some forms of relation between previous and successive events such that a previous event makes a successive event more likely, then determining causality is just an exercise in experimentation. The sort of thing that all scientists do all the time. Thus, while “causality” may be unfounded in some fastidious philosophical sense, it is by no means empty. I’ll quote below from a footnote from a paper we just wrote which tries to preempt criticism our use of “causal” arguments in the paper. The footnote makes reference to work by a colleague and friend of mine, here in Santa Fe, Frank Wimberly. I will copy him here to try and get him to speak up. He tends to lurk, until I say something really foolish, which no doubt I have. The whole paper is at http://www.behavior.org/resource.php?id=675 . So, here is the footnote:*** * ** ** Some might argue that in falling back on a more vernacular understanding of causality we have paid too great a price in rigor. However, as our Seminar colleague Frank Wimberly pointed out, the vernacular understanding of casualty is potentially rigorous. Research investigating what aspects of the world lay people are sensitive to when assigning causality suggests people are sensitive to particular types of probabilistic relationships (Cheng, Novick, Liljeholm, Ford, 2007) and that certain types of experiments are better than others at revealing such relationships (Glymour Wimberly, 2007). ** ** Frank? ** ** Nick ** ** ** ** *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.comfriam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Russ Abbott *Sent:* Monday, March 25, 2013 11:05 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice ** ** Nick, ** ** You're the scientist; I'm only a computer scientist. So you are more qualified to talk about science and cause. ** ** Do you think science organizes its theories in terms of causes? I see equations, entities, structures, geometries, and mechanisms, but I don't see causes. As I'm sure you know, the notion of cause is very slippery. I think science is better off without it. ** ** But I'm interested in your perspective. What do
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Jeees Louise. … I've been trying so hard to curb my addiction to taking time to respond to the continuously intriguing things that show up at the Friam…. but I must say, Doug, that the phrase violently disinterested is a classic, even for you. And as long as I'm at it, Sas, I laughed out loud at your various descriptions of the Vilmains, from your KaliLoki wife on along…. Thanks you all- Tory On Mar 26, 2013, at 12:04 PM, Douglas Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net wrote: This list constantly reminds me that we are all, thankfully, different. Offhand, I can not think of a topic that I would be more violently disinterested in than the philosophy of causation. Unless maybe it would be the philosophy of complexity, or perhaps the philosophy of agent-based model design. But I acknowledge that a not small fraction of you eat this stuff up, so please: have at it! --Doug On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Frank Wimberly wimber...@gmail.com wrote: Nick, Here is the complete citation: Glymour, C., and Wimberly, F. Actual Causes and Thought Experiments, in Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke, Harry S. Silverstein (eds.), Causation and Explanation: Topics in Contemporary Philosopy, MIT Press, Cambridge, July 2007. I’ll buy a cup of coffee for anyone who reads the whole paper. The book contains a number of papers by luminaries in the area of philosophy of causation including Patrick Suppes, Nancy Cartwright, Christopher Hitchcock, etc. I was surprised to find that it’s available on Google books: http://tinyurl.com/d9l44jh Frank Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz Santa Fe, NM 87505 wimber...@gmail.com wimbe...@cal.berkeley.edu Phone: (505) 995-8715 Cell: (505) 670-9918 From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson Sent: Monday, March 25, 2013 11:57 PM To: russ.abb...@gmail.com; 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' Subject: Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice Russ, I don’t know wtf I am. I have always thought of myself as a scientist, but I am sure that many on this list have their doubts. I am certainly not a “hard” scientist. I was hoping by my comment to lure you into a more lengthy explication of the idea that real scientists don’t think in terms of causes. But now you have smoked me out instead, so here goes. Many of the philosophers I know, from time to time like to talk about causality as if it were a sophomoric illusion, citing Hume, or some sort of weird quantum theory. But that does not keep them from using causal reasoning freely in their everyday lives. I have never heard a philosopher who was reluctant to say things like “my car stalled because it ran out of gas”. I think what they mean when they deny causality is the denial of something that, as a behaviorist, I never thought to entertain: some deep gear-and-cog mechanism lurking behind experience. If one once concedes that all one means by causality is some forms of relation between previous and successive events such that a previous event makes a successive event more likely, then determining causality is just an exercise in experimentation. The sort of thing that all scientists do all the time. Thus, while “causality” may be unfounded in some fastidious philosophical sense, it is by no means empty. I’ll quote below from a footnote from a paper we just wrote which tries to preempt criticism our use of “causal” arguments in the paper. The footnote makes reference to work by a colleague and friend of mine, here in Santa Fe, Frank Wimberly. I will copy him here to try and get him to speak up. He tends to lurk, until I say something really foolish, which no doubt I have. The whole paper is at http://www.behavior.org/resource.php?id=675 . So, here is the footnote: Some might argue that in falling back on a more vernacular understanding of causality we have paid too great a price in rigor. However, as our Seminar colleague Frank Wimberly pointed out, the vernacular understanding of casualty is potentially rigorous. Research investigating what aspects of the world lay people are sensitive to when assigning causality suggests people are sensitive to particular types of probabilistic relationships (Cheng, Novick, Liljeholm, Ford, 2007) and that certain types of experiments are better than others at revealing such relationships (Glymour Wimberly, 2007). Frank? Nick From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott Sent: Monday, March 25, 2013 11:05 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice Nick, You're the scientist; I'm only a computer scientist. So you are more qualified to talk about science
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Enough already! This is beginning to sound like Facebook. Frank, I drink tea. As promised, you buy. Merle On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 12:11 PM, Victoria Hughes victo...@toryhughes.com wrote: Jeees Louise. … I've been trying so hard to curb my addiction to taking time to respond to the continuously intriguing things that show up at the Friam…. but I must say, Doug, that the phrase violently disinterested is a classic, even for you. And as long as I'm at it, Sas, I laughed out loud at your various descriptions of the Vilmains, from your KaliLoki wife on along…. Thanks you all- Tory On Mar 26, 2013, at 12:04 PM, Douglas Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net wrote: This list constantly reminds me that we are all, thankfully, different. Offhand, I can not think of a topic that I would be more violently disinterested in than the philosophy of causation. Unless maybe it would be the philosophy of complexity, or perhaps the philosophy of agent-based model design. But I acknowledge that a not small fraction of you eat this stuff up, so please: have at it! --Doug On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Frank Wimberly wimber...@gmail.com wrote: Nick, Here is the complete citation: Glymour, C., and Wimberly, F. Actual Causes and Thought Experiments, in Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke, Harry S. Silverstein (eds.), Causation and Explanation: Topics in Contemporary Philosopy, MIT Press, Cambridge, July 2007. I’ll buy a cup of coffee for anyone who reads the whole paper. The book contains a number of papers by luminaries in the area of philosophy of causation including Patrick Suppes, Nancy Cartwright, Christopher Hitchcock, etc. I was surprised to find that it’s available on Google books: http://tinyurl.com/d9l44jh Frank Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz Santa Fe, NM 87505 wimber...@gmail.com wimbe...@cal.berkeley.edu Phone: (505) 995-8715 Cell: (505) 670-9918 From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson Sent: Monday, March 25, 2013 11:57 PM To: russ.abb...@gmail.com; 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' Subject: Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice Russ, I don’t know wtf I am. I have always thought of myself as a scientist, but I am sure that many on this list have their doubts. I am certainly not a “hard” scientist. I was hoping by my comment to lure you into a more lengthy explication of the idea that real scientists don’t think in terms of causes. But now you have smoked me out instead, so here goes. Many of the philosophers I know, from time to time like to talk about causality as if it were a sophomoric illusion, citing Hume, or some sort of weird quantum theory. But that does not keep them from using causal reasoning freely in their everyday lives. I have never heard a philosopher who was reluctant to say things like “my car stalled because it ran out of gas”. I think what they mean when they deny causality is the denial of something that, as a behaviorist, I never thought to entertain: some deep gear-and-cog mechanism lurking behind experience. If one once concedes that all one means by causality is some forms of relation between previous and successive events such that a previous event makes a successive event more likely, then determining causality is just an exercise in experimentation. The sort of thing that all scientists do all the time. Thus, while “causality” may be unfounded in some fastidious philosophical sense, it is by no means empty. I’ll quote below from a footnote from a paper we just wrote which tries to preempt criticism our use of “causal” arguments in the paper. The footnote makes reference to work by a colleague and friend of mine, here in Santa Fe, Frank Wimberly. I will copy him here to try and get him to speak up. He tends to lurk, until I say something really foolish, which no doubt I have. The whole paper is at http://www.behavior.org/resource.php?id=675 . So, here is the footnote: Some might argue that in falling back on a more vernacular understanding of causality we have paid too great a price in rigor. However, as our Seminar colleague Frank Wimberly pointed out, the vernacular understanding of casualty is potentially rigorous. Research investigating what aspects of the world lay people are sensitive to when assigning causality suggests people are sensitive to particular types of probabilistic relationships (Cheng, Novick, Liljeholm, Ford, 2007) and that certain types of experiments are better than others at revealing such relationships (Glymour Wimberly, 2007). Frank? Nick From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott Sent: Monday, March 25, 2013 11:05 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice Nick, You're the scientist; I'm only
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
(….. but a tad more articulate, and no un-friend option …) - Alright. I see your cup of tea and raise you a double espresso. To more directly answer the proposed topic: I add that I would happily discuss philosophy (about which I have strong and articulate ideas / information) with anyone provided that 1. The discussion also references non-European, non-white-male models for awareness, reality, conceptual modeling, etc. 2. The discussion does not devolve into intellectual posturing. Voilà Merle, less Facebook, more filling. Hm, or perhaps more provocative. Or perhaps, gasp, I too may be violently disinterested in the way philosophy is discussed in fora such as this. ! Tory On Mar 26, 2013, at 12:18 PM, Merle Lefkoff merlelefk...@gmail.com wrote: Enough already! This is beginning to sound like Facebook. Frank, I drink tea. As promised, you buy. Merle On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 12:11 PM, Victoria Hughes victo...@toryhughes.com wrote: Jeees Louise. … I've been trying so hard to curb my addiction to taking time to respond to the continuously intriguing things that show up at the Friam…. but I must say, Doug, that the phrase violently disinterested is a classic, even for you. And as long as I'm at it, Sas, I laughed out loud at your various descriptions of the Vilmains, from your KaliLoki wife on along…. Thanks you all- Tory On Mar 26, 2013, at 12:04 PM, Douglas Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net wrote: This list constantly reminds me that we are all, thankfully, different. Offhand, I can not think of a topic that I would be more violently disinterested in than the philosophy of causation. Unless maybe it would be the philosophy of complexity, or perhaps the philosophy of agent-based model design. But I acknowledge that a not small fraction of you eat this stuff up, so please: have at it! --Doug On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Frank Wimberly wimber...@gmail.com wrote: Nick, Here is the complete citation: Glymour, C., and Wimberly, F. Actual Causes and Thought Experiments, in Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke, Harry S. Silverstein (eds.), Causation and Explanation: Topics in Contemporary Philosopy, MIT Press, Cambridge, July 2007. I’ll buy a cup of coffee for anyone who reads the whole paper. The book contains a number of papers by luminaries in the area of philosophy of causation including Patrick Suppes, Nancy Cartwright, Christopher Hitchcock, etc. I was surprised to find that it’s available on Google books: http://tinyurl.com/d9l44jh Frank Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz Santa Fe, NM 87505 wimber...@gmail.com wimbe...@cal.berkeley.edu Phone: (505) 995-8715 Cell: (505) 670-9918 From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson Sent: Monday, March 25, 2013 11:57 PM To: russ.abb...@gmail.com; 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' Subject: Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice Russ, I don’t know wtf I am. I have always thought of myself as a scientist, but I am sure that many on this list have their doubts. I am certainly not a “hard” scientist. I was hoping by my comment to lure you into a more lengthy explication of the idea that real scientists don’t think in terms of causes. But now you have smoked me out instead, so here goes. Many of the philosophers I know, from time to time like to talk about causality as if it were a sophomoric illusion, citing Hume, or some sort of weird quantum theory. But that does not keep them from using causal reasoning freely in their everyday lives. I have never heard a philosopher who was reluctant to say things like “my car stalled because it ran out of gas”. I think what they mean when they deny causality is the denial of something that, as a behaviorist, I never thought to entertain: some deep gear-and-cog mechanism lurking behind experience. If one once concedes that all one means by causality is some forms of relation between previous and successive events such that a previous event makes a successive event more likely, then determining causality is just an exercise in experimentation. The sort of thing that all scientists do all the time. Thus, while “causality” may be unfounded in some fastidious philosophical sense, it is by no means empty. I’ll quote below from a footnote from a paper we just wrote which tries to preempt criticism our use of “causal” arguments in the paper. The footnote makes reference to work by a colleague and friend of mine, here in Santa Fe, Frank Wimberly. I will copy him here to try and get him to speak up. He tends to lurk, until I say something really foolish, which no doubt I have. The whole paper is at http://www.behavior.org/resource.php?id=675 . So, here is the footnote: Some might argue that in falling back on a more vernacular
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Victoria Hughes wrote at 03/26/2013 11:27 AM: 1. The discussion also references non-European, non-white-male models for awareness, reality, conceptual modeling, etc. 2. The discussion does not devolve into intellectual posturing. This reminded me of the Ulam quote: Talking about non-linear mathematics is like talking about non-elephant zoology. -- Stanislaw Ulam I willingly admit my ignorance. But honestly, is there _any_ philosophy that is not, ultimately, intellectual posturing? ;-) Or, further, is there any speech/verbiage whatsoever that is not, ultimately, intellectual posturing? I heard from somewhere a speculation that the emergence of human language replaced (to whatever extent) grooming. If that's at all true, then I suppose there is some speech ... pillow talk, platitudes, or perhaps lyricism/poetry that is as much about physics (soothing and communion) as it is about the ideal of communication or intellect. And I suppose one might believe (act as if) the expression of an ideal (an intellectual artifact) via words is somehow authentic as opposed to posturing. But, when I examine my own behavior in the light of what I observe from others and vice versa, it's quite difficult to distinguish between the former (authentic expression) and the latter (posturing). But, I also admit my gullibility and naivete. -- == glen e. p. ropella Like it's screwed itself in hell 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
How interesting, Glen! I'm curious- how do you talk to your friends? Or your children, if you have any? Or those you want to teach you something? Yes, I do believe, and practice as best I can, opportunities for non-intellectual posturing. I certainly claim the right to posture with knowledge and intellect - but I know absolutely that is not the only philosophy I practice. It is in fact not the best philosophical basis for a variety of purposes. From my perspective, anything that is actually asking a question, and actually listening and considering the answer, and inquiring into it for new information, and then integrating new information to continue the dialogue, is not intellectual posturing. Communication exists for many purposes. I believe that communication, of which sharing ideas and information is one category, is not a hierarchical system but a needs-based system. So by that definition, dialogue is always expressing something about the speaker, and her/his intentions towards the listener. And (in most cases other than for a didactic purpose) the purpose is the back and forth of the dialogue. Then what that reciprocity brings to the participants. If there is no particular forward motion brought about by the dialogue - in the direction of the purpose for which the dialogue was established - than that is posturing. But there are a myriad of options for philosophical dialogue that do have functional growth / expansion / increased knowledge. I'm signing off for today, pleasure to bounce ideas back and forth as always. Tory On Mar 26, 2013, at 12:44 PM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Victoria Hughes wrote at 03/26/2013 11:27 AM: 1. The discussion also references non-European, non-white-male models for awareness, reality, conceptual modeling, etc. 2. The discussion does not devolve into intellectual posturing. This reminded me of the Ulam quote: Talking about non-linear mathematics is like talking about non-elephant zoology. -- Stanislaw Ulam I willingly admit my ignorance. But honestly, is there _any_ philosophy that is not, ultimately, intellectual posturing? ;-) Or, further, is there any speech/verbiage whatsoever that is not, ultimately, intellectual posturing? I heard from somewhere a speculation that the emergence of human language replaced (to whatever extent) grooming. If that's at all true, then I suppose there is some speech ... pillow talk, platitudes, or perhaps lyricism/poetry that is as much about physics (soothing and communion) as it is about the ideal of communication or intellect. And I suppose one might believe (act as if) the expression of an ideal (an intellectual artifact) via words is somehow authentic as opposed to posturing. But, when I examine my own behavior in the light of what I observe from others and vice versa, it's quite difficult to distinguish between the former (authentic expression) and the latter (posturing). But, I also admit my gullibility and naivete. -- == glen e. p. ropella Like it's screwed itself in hell 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 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
_Causation and Explanation_ looks like a good book. Strangely, its Amazon paperback pricehttp://www.amazon.com/Causation-Explanation-Topics-Contemporary-Philosophy/dp/B008SLYJ4G/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_nC?ie=UTF8colid=QIM4OPN4IQSScoliid=I1V01X94UI8MFU is only $13.52 even though its Amazon Kindle price is $28.80. (I just ordered one of the 3 copies remaining in stock.) I have no problem with the manipulatist/Baysian/experimentalist/social-studies approach to causation. It's a way to establish a connection between A and B that's stronger than correlation. (More or less: if changing A changes B, then A is a cause of B.) But that doesn't explain how A causes B. It's in that sort of how-explanation that I don't see scientific talk of causation. *-- Russ Abbott* *_* *** Professor, Computer Science* * California State University, Los Angeles* * My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688* * Google voice: 747-*999-5105 Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/ * vita: *sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ CS Wiki http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/ and the courses I teach *_* On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:44 AM, glen g...@ropella.name wrote: Victoria Hughes wrote at 03/26/2013 11:27 AM: 1. The discussion also references non-European, non-white-male models for awareness, reality, conceptual modeling, etc. 2. The discussion does not devolve into intellectual posturing. This reminded me of the Ulam quote: Talking about non-linear mathematics is like talking about non-elephant zoology. -- Stanislaw Ulam I willingly admit my ignorance. But honestly, is there _any_ philosophy that is not, ultimately, intellectual posturing? ;-) Or, further, is there any speech/verbiage whatsoever that is not, ultimately, intellectual posturing? I heard from somewhere a speculation that the emergence of human language replaced (to whatever extent) grooming. If that's at all true, then I suppose there is some speech ... pillow talk, platitudes, or perhaps lyricism/poetry that is as much about physics (soothing and communion) as it is about the ideal of communication or intellect. And I suppose one might believe (act as if) the expression of an ideal (an intellectual artifact) via words is somehow authentic as opposed to posturing. But, when I examine my own behavior in the light of what I observe from others and vice versa, it's quite difficult to distinguish between the former (authentic expression) and the latter (posturing). But, I also admit my gullibility and naivete. -- == glen e. p. ropella Like it's screwed itself in hell 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 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Russ Abbott wrote at 03/26/2013 12:01 PM: _Causation and Explanation_ looks like a good book. Strangely, its Amazon paperback price http://www.amazon.com/Causation-Explanation-Topics-Contemporary-Philosophy/dp/B008SLYJ4G/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_nC?ie=UTF8colid=QIM4OPN4IQSScoliid=I1V01X94UI8MFU is only $13.52 even though its Amazon Kindle price is $28.80. (I just ordered one of the 3 copies remaining in stock.) I have no problem with the manipulatist/Baysian/experimentalist/social-studies approach to causation. It's a way to establish a connection between A and B that's stronger than correlation. (More or less: if changing A changes B, then A is a cause of B.) But that doesn't explain how A causes B. It's in that sort of how-explanation that I don't see scientific talk of causation. This one's pretty good: Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference by Judea Pearl http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/174276.Causality -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action. -- Bertrand Russell 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
On 3/26/13 2:23 AM, Joshua Thorp wrote: When I was in high school, someone gave me a photocopy of an article from OMNI magazine. It was an interview with Chris Langton about artificial life. I think I have been fascinated with these same twinkling lights ever since. It was pretty inspiring for me, having grown up in Santa Fe myself, it was so cool to see someone I could aspire to -- who could also be living in Santa Fe. I finally found the reference... it was an interview by Steven Levy titled It's Alive in 1991 but without a subscription to Rolling Stone, I can't access their archives directly. At least I'm not *crazy* (in that particular way). I'm surprised how obscure the article went. - Steve 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Victoria Hughes wrote at 03/26/2013 12:02 PM: I'm curious- how do you talk to your friends? Or your children, if you have any? Or those you want to teach you something? Great question! I'm often frustrated by my conversations with my friends. I usually feel like I'm offering alternative explanations for various things. They almost universally end up believing I'm contrarian or argumentative. It's unclear to me why they tolerate me. It usually goes something like this: Them: X happened. So to compensate, I will do Y. Me: But perhaps Z really happened and you only thought it was X. And if that's the case, then perhaps P is a better course of action. Them: No, there's no way that Z happened. It was definitely X. Me: There's a person/book/article/theory/... that Z can be mistaken for X or that X is a side effect of Z. Them: No way. I know the truth. I have access to reality. Me: OK. Then after I get home (it's usually a dinner party or somesuch), I find the person/book/article/... and e-mail it to them. In response I get nothing... not even the sound of crickets. 8^) That's how I usually talk to people, friends or not. I have no children, thank Cthulu. And I wish people would do the same with me. I.e. provide alternatives to whatever gravity well I'm stuck in. From my perspective, anything that is actually asking a question, and actually listening and considering the answer, and inquiring into it for new information, and then integrating new information to continue the dialogue, is not intellectual posturing. In any other conversation, I'd agree. But in this conversation, I'll propose the following. Competent posturing requires just as much asking, listening, consideration, and integration as does non-posturing. I say this from the perspective of fighting. A good fighter knows that the feint is a legitimate fighting move. Yes, you may have to unpack it's _role_ in the fight. But it's just as much a part of fighting as a straightforward attack or defense. The same could be said of, say, my cat's fur fluffing up and it turning sideways when a dog appears. Yes, it's posturing. But it's just as much a part of the interaction as the lightning fast pop to the snout. And remember, I offer this in the spirit of alternatives. I legitimately believe I'm offering you an alternative, albeit one you already know but may not have (yet) invoked in this conversation. Communication exists for many purposes. I believe that communication, of which sharing ideas and information is one category, is not a hierarchical system but a needs-based system. So by that definition, dialogue is always expressing something about the speaker, and her/his intentions towards the listener. And (in most cases other than for a didactic purpose) the purpose is the back and forth of the dialogue. Then what that reciprocity brings to the participants. Heh, now you're just pushing my buttons! I don't believe communication (as normally conceived) exists at all. The ideas in your head are forever and completely alien to my head. You may have a mechanism for faithfully translating your ideas into your action or inferring ideas from your perceptions. And I may have similarly faithful translators. But the similarity between your ideas and mine is zero, even if/when the similarity in our behaviors is quite high. But, that doesn't change your conclusion, which I agree with. Reciprocity is critical to the interaction. The difference is only that I believe in sharing actions. The ideas are not shared and largely useless. If there is no particular forward motion brought about by the dialogue - in the direction of the purpose for which the dialogue was established - than that is posturing. I'll offer another alternative. There is no forward. There is only movement, change. While we may share a behavior space, we probably don't share a vector, a line of progression, in that space. Hence, what you may see as posturing (or aimless wandering), I may legitimately feel to be progress ... even if it's postmodern gobbledygook. But there are a myriad of options for philosophical dialogue that do have functional growth / expansion / increased knowledge. I agree, except there is no such thing as knowledge in the idealistic, intellectual sense. There is only _competence_, the ability to perform, to achieve. And that includes the modification of what we _say_ and how we say it by saying things together. -- == glen e. p. ropella The ocean parts and the meteors come down 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Glen - I have to say that your world-view (which I think you will claim doesn't exist or at least that *I* can't possibly come to share) continues to be more and more fascinating as you pull back more layers of otherwise common understandings which you don't share with the world at large. I mean this in the most favorable way. The hardest part about it all is that the more I think I understand your world view, the more I believe your world view doesn't allow for me to actually understand your world view! Why does head hurt when Hulk try to think? - Steve Victoria Hughes wrote at 03/26/2013 12:02 PM: I'm curious- how do you talk to your friends? Or your children, if you have any? Or those you want to teach you something? Great question! I'm often frustrated by my conversations with my friends. I usually feel like I'm offering alternative explanations for various things. They almost universally end up believing I'm contrarian or argumentative. It's unclear to me why they tolerate me. It usually goes something like this: Them: X happened. So to compensate, I will do Y. Me: But perhaps Z really happened and you only thought it was X. And if that's the case, then perhaps P is a better course of action. Them: No, there's no way that Z happened. It was definitely X. Me: There's a person/book/article/theory/... that Z can be mistaken for X or that X is a side effect of Z. Them: No way. I know the truth. I have access to reality. Me: OK. Then after I get home (it's usually a dinner party or somesuch), I find the person/book/article/... and e-mail it to them. In response I get nothing... not even the sound of crickets. 8^) That's how I usually talk to people, friends or not. I have no children, thank Cthulu. And I wish people would do the same with me. I.e. provide alternatives to whatever gravity well I'm stuck in. From my perspective, anything that is actually asking a question, and actually listening and considering the answer, and inquiring into it for new information, and then integrating new information to continue the dialogue, is not intellectual posturing. In any other conversation, I'd agree. But in this conversation, I'll propose the following. Competent posturing requires just as much asking, listening, consideration, and integration as does non-posturing. I say this from the perspective of fighting. A good fighter knows that the feint is a legitimate fighting move. Yes, you may have to unpack it's _role_ in the fight. But it's just as much a part of fighting as a straightforward attack or defense. The same could be said of, say, my cat's fur fluffing up and it turning sideways when a dog appears. Yes, it's posturing. But it's just as much a part of the interaction as the lightning fast pop to the snout. And remember, I offer this in the spirit of alternatives. I legitimately believe I'm offering you an alternative, albeit one you already know but may not have (yet) invoked in this conversation. Communication exists for many purposes. I believe that communication, of which sharing ideas and information is one category, is not a hierarchical system but a needs-based system. So by that definition, dialogue is always expressing something about the speaker, and her/his intentions towards the listener. And (in most cases other than for a didactic purpose) the purpose is the back and forth of the dialogue. Then what that reciprocity brings to the participants. Heh, now you're just pushing my buttons! I don't believe communication (as normally conceived) exists at all. The ideas in your head are forever and completely alien to my head. You may have a mechanism for faithfully translating your ideas into your action or inferring ideas from your perceptions. And I may have similarly faithful translators. But the similarity between your ideas and mine is zero, even if/when the similarity in our behaviors is quite high. But, that doesn't change your conclusion, which I agree with. Reciprocity is critical to the interaction. The difference is only that I believe in sharing actions. The ideas are not shared and largely useless. If there is no particular forward motion brought about by the dialogue - in the direction of the purpose for which the dialogue was established - than that is posturing. I'll offer another alternative. There is no forward. There is only movement, change. While we may share a behavior space, we probably don't share a vector, a line of progression, in that space. Hence, what you may see as posturing (or aimless wandering), I may legitimately feel to be progress ... even if it's postmodern gobbledygook. But there are a myriad of options for philosophical dialogue that do have functional growth / expansion / increased knowledge. I agree, except there is no such thing as knowledge in the idealistic, intellectual sense. There is only _competence_, the ability to perform, to achieve. And that includes the modification of what
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Merle Lefkoff wrote at 03/26/2013 02:00 PM: Do you guys believe the metaphor of the Edge of Chaos is applicable here for promoting hope? I use it to say with a perfectly straight face: this is when change is most likely to happen. I'm not a big fan of the Edge of Chaos. It's attractive, I admit. But it seems to me that we pattern detectors do more imputing than detecting. Hence, the interestingness we see at the edge is just as false as the uninterestingness we see at either extreme. We could go back to Kauffman's paper, though, and talk about criticality and the indicators (if any) for a coming phase transition... perhaps a mixed state? What density/spread of 20-something activists does one need to induce a transition? -- == glen e. p. ropella Still so goddamn hungry 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Doug, One day, I will sit down with you over a beer and ruin your life by proving to you (using philosophical methods of course) that you ARE interested in it. At which point you will experience a Saul-to-Paul conversion and appear on the Plaza in white robes and sandals dispensing spiritual wisdom to the masses. Beware. Nick From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Douglas Roberts Sent: Tuesday, March 26, 2013 12:04 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice This list constantly reminds me that we are all, thankfully, different. Offhand, I can not think of a topic that I would be more violently disinterested in than the philosophy of causation. Unless maybe it would be the philosophy of complexity, or perhaps the philosophy of agent-based model design. But I acknowledge that a not small fraction of you eat this stuff up, so please: have at it! --Doug On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Frank Wimberly wimber...@gmail.com wrote: Nick, Here is the complete citation: Glymour, C., and Wimberly, F. Actual Causes and Thought Experiments, in Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke, Harry S. Silverstein (eds.), Causation and Explanation: Topics in Contemporary Philosopy, MIT Press, Cambridge, July 2007. I'll buy a cup of coffee for anyone who reads the whole paper. The book contains a number of papers by luminaries in the area of philosophy of causation including Patrick Suppes, Nancy Cartwright, Christopher Hitchcock, etc. I was surprised to find that it's available on Google books: http://tinyurl.com/d9l44jh Frank Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz Santa Fe, NM 87505 mailto:wimber...@gmail.com wimber...@gmail.com mailto:wimbe...@cal.berkeley.edu wimbe...@cal.berkeley.edu Phone: (505) 995-8715 tel:%28505%29%20995-8715 Cell: (505) 670-9918 tel:%28505%29%20670-9918 From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson Sent: Monday, March 25, 2013 11:57 PM To: russ.abb...@gmail.com; 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' Subject: Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice Russ, I don't know wtf I am. I have always thought of myself as a scientist, but I am sure that many on this list have their doubts. I am certainly not a hard scientist. I was hoping by my comment to lure you into a more lengthy explication of the idea that real scientists don't think in terms of causes. But now you have smoked me out instead, so here goes. Many of the philosophers I know, from time to time like to talk about causality as if it were a sophomoric illusion, citing Hume, or some sort of weird quantum theory. But that does not keep them from using causal reasoning freely in their everyday lives. I have never heard a philosopher who was reluctant to say things like my car stalled because it ran out of gas. I think what they mean when they deny causality is the denial of something that, as a behaviorist, I never thought to entertain: some deep gear-and-cog mechanism lurking behind experience. If one once concedes that all one means by causality is some forms of relation between previous and successive events such that a previous event makes a successive event more likely, then determining causality is just an exercise in experimentation. The sort of thing that all scientists do all the time. Thus, while causality may be unfounded in some fastidious philosophical sense, it is by no means empty. I'll quote below from a footnote from a paper we just wrote which tries to preempt criticism our use of causal arguments in the paper. The footnote makes reference to work by a colleague and friend of mine, here in Santa Fe, Frank Wimberly. I will copy him here to try and get him to speak up. He tends to lurk, until I say something really foolish, which no doubt I have. The whole paper is at http://www.behavior.org/resource.php?id=675 . So, here is the footnote: Some might argue that in falling back on a more vernacular understanding of causality we have paid too great a price in rigor. However, as our Seminar colleague Frank Wimberly pointed out, the vernacular understanding of casualty is potentially rigorous. Research investigating what aspects of the world lay people are sensitive to when assigning causality suggests people are sensitive to particular types of probabilistic relationships (Cheng, Novick, Liljeholm, Ford, 2007) and that certain types of experiments are better than others at revealing such relationships (Glymour Wimberly, 2007). Frank? Nick From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott Sent: Monday, March 25, 2013 11:05 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice Nick, You're the scientist; I'm only a computer scientist. So you are more qualified
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
As you say, Nick. And that will either right before, or right afterward I convert to some religion or another. But in the mean time, we can still have that beer. --Doug On Wed, Mar 27, 2013 at 3:12 AM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Doug, ** ** One day, I will sit down with you over a beer and ruin your life by proving to you (using philosophical methods of course) that you ARE interested in it. At which point you will experience a Saul-to-Paul conversion and appear on the Plaza in white robes and sandals dispensing spiritual wisdom to the masses. ** ** Beware. ** ** Nick ** ** *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Douglas Roberts *Sent:* Tuesday, March 26, 2013 12:04 PM *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice ** ** This list constantly reminds me that we are all, thankfully, different. Offhand, I can not think of a topic that I would be more violently disinterested in than the philosophy of causation. Unless maybe it would be the philosophy of complexity, or perhaps the philosophy of agent-based model design. ** ** But I acknowledge that a not small fraction of you eat this stuff up, so please: have at it! ** ** --Doug ** ** On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 11:57 AM, Frank Wimberly wimber...@gmail.com wrote: Nick, Here is the complete citation: Glymour, C., and Wimberly, F. Actual Causes and Thought Experiments, in Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke, Harry S. Silverstein (eds.), Causation and Explanation: Topics in Contemporary Philosopy, MIT Press, Cambridge, July 2007. I’ll buy a cup of coffee for anyone who reads the whole paper. The book contains a number of papers by luminaries in the area of philosophy of causation including Patrick Suppes, Nancy Cartwright, Christopher Hitchcock, etc. I was surprised to find that it’s available on Google books: *http://tinyurl.com/d9l44jh * * * Frank Frank C. Wimberly 140 Calle Ojo Feliz Santa Fe, NM 87505 wimber...@gmail.com wimbe...@cal.berkeley.edu Phone: (505) 995-8715 Cell: (505) 670-9918 *From:* Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] *On Behalf Of *Nicholas Thompson *Sent:* Monday, March 25, 2013 11:57 PM *To:* russ.abb...@gmail.com; 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice Russ, I don’t know wtf I am. I have always thought of myself as a scientist, but I am sure that many on this list have their doubts. I am certainly not a “hard” scientist. I was hoping by my comment to lure you into a more lengthy explication of the idea that real scientists don’t think in terms of causes. But now you have smoked me out instead, so here goes. Many of the *philosophers* I know, from time to time like to talk about causality as if it were a sophomoric illusion, citing Hume, or some sort of weird quantum theory. But that does not keep them from using causal reasoning freely in their everyday lives. I have never heard a philosopher who was reluctant to say things like “my car stalled because it ran out of gas”. I think what they mean when they deny causality is the denial of something that, as a behaviorist, I never thought to entertain: some deep gear-and-cog mechanism lurking behind experience. If one once concedes that all one means by causality is some forms of relation between previous and successive events such that a previous event makes a successive event more likely, then determining causality is just an exercise in experimentation. The sort of thing that all scientists do all the time. Thus, while “causality” may be unfounded in some fastidious philosophical sense, it is by no means empty. I’ll quote below from a footnote from a paper we just wrote which tries to preempt criticism our use of “causal” arguments in the paper. The footnote makes reference to work by a colleague and friend of mine, here in Santa Fe, Frank Wimberly. I will copy him here to try and get him to speak up. He tends to lurk, until I say something really foolish, which no doubt I have. The whole paper is at http://www.behavior.org/resource.php?id=675 . So, here is the footnote:*** * Some might argue that in falling back on a more vernacular understanding of causality we have paid too great a price in rigor. However, as our Seminar colleague Frank Wimberly pointed out, the vernacular understanding of casualty is potentially rigorous. Research investigating what aspects of the world lay people are sensitive to when assigning causality suggests people are sensitive to particular types of probabilistic
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
It would almost be worth it to see the look on your face, Steve. On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 9:21 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: On 3/26/13 9:12 PM, Nicholas Thompson wrote: Doug, ** ** One day, I will sit down with you over a beer and ruin your life by proving to you (using philosophical methods of course) that you ARE interested in it. At which point you will experience a Saul-to-Paul conversion and appear on the Plaza in white robes and sandals dispensing spiritual wisdom to the masses. Careful... if the wind comes up and Doug's robes blow up (think Marilyn Monroe) it will be exposed that he wears the very same funny underwear that he chides the Mormons on. It is a funny world isn't it? 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 -- *Doug Roberts d...@parrot-farm.net* *http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins*http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins * http://parrot-farm.net/Second-Cousins 505-455-7333 - Office 505-672-8213 - Mobile* 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
[FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.5684 Stu Kauffman on the varieties of laws and entailments. -- rec -- 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Roger Critchlow wrote at 03/25/2013 07:55 AM: http://arxiv.org/abs/1303.5684 Stu Kauffman on the varieties of laws and entailments. Wow, seriously? A paper on the exact same subject as Robert Rosen's big works and not a single citation of Rosen, even to call him wrong? What am I missing? -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-255-2847, http://tempusdictum.com There is nothing as permanent as a temporary government program. -- Milton Friedman 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Kaufman also neglects Prigogine in his books. Curt Glen wrote: Stu Kauffman on the varieties of laws and entailments. Wow, seriously? A paper on the exact same subject as Robert Rosen's big works and not a single citation of Rosen, even to call him wrong? What am I missing? Have you *met* Stu? My experience is that he does not reference his sources very thoroughly (even to dismiss them). He's a rock star (in his own mind)... does Mick Jagger acknowledge his influences (I actually don't know)? I still think Kauffman is dead on with most of his ideas, even if he is not always honest (thorough) with is referencing/acknowledging. Superficially it can make him look like a psuedo-scientific charlatan. Following Rich's recent post ( http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-real-meaning-behind-ted-controversy.html ) regarding the imminent demise of materialism seems relevant. I think Kauffman is doing more to bring hardline materialism (appropriately) into question than the likes of Sheldrake ever will. Sheldrake's brand of psuedoscience seems to be very popular based primarily on it's outsider status. We love our conspiracy theories... and our perpetual motion machines... and our free energy... and grassy knolls... and Bush-binLadin secret marriages ... anyone who claims to debunk most of modern scientist is presumed to be the second coming of Galileo (by many). I wonder what D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson would have to say about Sheldrake's Morphic Resonance? I'm guessing he would roll in the grave and release some dusty miasma in his general direction? On the other hand, my (Virologist) daughter has pointed me to dozens of examples where mechanisms much like Lamarckian Evolution seems to be in play. So the old clear line between Darwin's and Lamarck's legacies is smearing a bit. - Steve 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Quite a few of us on the list worked for Stu at BiosGroup a decade ago. I was just a software geek there (not a scientist), so I'm not qualified to criticize the veracity of his ideas, but I will say that he has an amazing charisma and made many of us True Believers. Rock Star doesn't seem quite right, but he did manage to inspire a lot of us with a cheerful but humble confidence. Maybe demigod would be more like it. Of course, the fact that it was a startup and we all had visions of IPOs (sadly never happened) dancing in our heads probably added to his appeal. ;; Gary On Mar 25, 2013, at 4:33 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Kaufman also neglects Prigogine in his books. Curt Glen wrote: Stu Kauffman on the varieties of laws and entailments. Wow, seriously? A paper on the exact same subject as Robert Rosen's big works and not a single citation of Rosen, even to call him wrong? What am I missing? Have you *met* Stu? My experience is that he does not reference his sources very thoroughly (even to dismiss them). He's a rock star (in his own mind)... does Mick Jagger acknowledge his influences (I actually don't know)? 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
I've been lucky enough to talk to Stu (last time in January; we've corresponded within the week) about some of these ideas. He *is* careless with references. But I'm sure I've heard him mention Prigogine as he talked. These ideas have been fermenting for several years, and I'm not surprised he overlooks precedents. I say lucky enough, because he's inspiring, and often enough, persuasive. God knows I don't understand everything he says, and long to edit what I do understand. But he's an alpine point hisownself, an endlessly provocative thinker, and I'm happy to overlook some lapses for the privilege of listening. Stu can be extremely generous. My first visit to the Santa Fe Institute was in 1991-92, and I can remember sitting alone in a room looking at stuff I'd never encountered before, and wondering WTF? But I could always knock on Stu's half-open door, and ask. He answered. Yes, it was very much part of the Institute ethos then, that you explained anything you could to anybody who asked, but that started a friendship I deeply value. Pamela On Mar 25, 2013, at 5:48 PM, Gary Schiltz g...@naturesvisualarts.com wrote: Quite a few of us on the list worked for Stu at BiosGroup a decade ago. I was just a software geek there (not a scientist), so I'm not qualified to criticize the veracity of his ideas, but I will say that he has an amazing charisma and made many of us True Believers. Rock Star doesn't seem quite right, but he did manage to inspire a lot of us with a cheerful but humble confidence. Maybe demigod would be more like it. Of course, the fact that it was a startup and we all had visions of IPOs (sadly never happened) dancing in our heads probably added to his appeal. ;; Gary On Mar 25, 2013, at 4:33 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Kaufman also neglects Prigogine in his books. Curt Glen wrote: Stu Kauffman on the varieties of laws and entailments. Wow, seriously? A paper on the exact same subject as Robert Rosen's big works and not a single citation of Rosen, even to call him wrong? What am I missing? Have you *met* Stu? My experience is that he does not reference his sources very thoroughly (even to dismiss them). He's a rock star (in his own mind)... does Mick Jagger acknowledge his influences (I actually don't know)? 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 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Gary/Pamela/(Stephen, Carl, Eric, ...) - I know several (many?) on this list know Stu better than I... so I apologize if I sounded overly critical. I prefer Pamela's description of him being *careless* with references as opposed to my own use of the *honest*. I also admit that I do not know if he sees himself as a rock-star... that is perhaps the default category I put people in who are simultaneously *good*, *self-possessed* and *charismatic*. I actually *like* most rock stars (within reason) even if I might not care for their music. As an aside... does anyone remember Chris Langton appearing in Rolling Stone (CA 1990?)... I searched their archives and did not find any references (nor on the internet at large?). I remember the article including a sexed-up spread of him in front of a Connection Machine? I suppose I could be hallucinating or have come from an alternate history? I also smiled at your term demigod as I often use Titans to describe the pantheon of my wife's sibling group... she is oldest of 8 *mostly* high functioning, *very* charismatic, *definitely* self-possessed siblings. They all revered their father who was a humble but charismatic physics professor. None of them took up science per se, though one has a PhD in psychology. I would not use *rock star* to describe any of their self-image, though there is one who insists he *is* Elvis... and sometimes we are tempted to believe him. There are definitely characters right out of Greek, Roman, Norse, even Hindu mythology in her family... My wife is Kali *and* Loki rolled into one I think. I have always been inspired by Kauffman's ideas as best I could understand them, which has been highly variable, depending on the circumstance. This says more about me than about Stu. I read his lecture notes in the late-nineties... the ones which ultimately became the core of _Investigations_ (or so it seemed to me). I had read _OofO_ and _At Home in the Universe_ previously. It may have been coincidence or something stronger like kismet that I read Investigations interleaved with my reading of Christopher Alexander's (Pattern Language fame) _Notes on the Synthesis of Form_ with D'Arcy Thompson's _On Growth and Form_ as backup reference. I was traveling lightly in New Zealand at the time with none of my usual distractions nagging me. It was a month of deep thought informed by Alexander and Kauffman equally. My nature is to be guarded around people with significant charisma (and me married into aforementioned pantheon!). I appreciate the need for and the value of the persuasive and the self-confident, even in the realm of science where ideas *by definition* must stand on their own. There is value for those who can bring us to *want* to believe enough to put in the hard work to believe things on their own merits. Unfortunately that might be the dividing line between science and Science(tm). I suppose I mistrust those who appear to be trying to corner the franchise on Science(tm) in their neighborhood. Nevertheless, I am *more* interested in Kauffman's ideas here and hope that we will discuss them a bit? - Steve 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
It seems strange to me that Kauffman would focus on cause. (I'll admit that I got that from just looking at the start of the paper. Perhaps he goes in a different direction.) Science really doesn't think in terms of causes. As I understand it science thinks in terms of forces, particles, etc., and equations that relate them, but not causes. This is especially noticeable when considering that the equations work forwards and backwards. If one wants to think in terms of a forward (in time) cause that implies a parallel backward (in time) cause, which makes the whole cause notion much less useful. Steve, you mentioned Lamarkian evolution. I'd be very interested to find out more about some of your daughter's examples. *-- Russ Abbott* *_* *** Professor, Computer Science* * California State University, Los Angeles* * My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688* * Google voice: 747-*999-5105 Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/ * vita: *sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ CS Wiki http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/ and the courses I teach *_* On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 3:42 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Gary/Pamela/(Stephen, Carl, Eric, ...) - I know several (many?) on this list know Stu better than I... so I apologize if I sounded overly critical. I prefer Pamela's description of him being *careless* with references as opposed to my own use of the *honest*. I also admit that I do not know if he sees himself as a rock-star... that is perhaps the default category I put people in who are simultaneously *good*, *self-possessed* and *charismatic*. I actually *like* most rock stars (within reason) even if I might not care for their music. As an aside... does anyone remember Chris Langton appearing in Rolling Stone (CA 1990?)... I searched their archives and did not find any references (nor on the internet at large?). I remember the article including a sexed-up spread of him in front of a Connection Machine? I suppose I could be hallucinating or have come from an alternate history? I also smiled at your term demigod as I often use Titans to describe the pantheon of my wife's sibling group... she is oldest of 8 *mostly* high functioning, *very* charismatic, *definitely* self-possessed siblings. They all revered their father who was a humble but charismatic physics professor. None of them took up science per se, though one has a PhD in psychology. I would not use *rock star* to describe any of their self-image, though there is one who insists he *is* Elvis... and sometimes we are tempted to believe him. There are definitely characters right out of Greek, Roman, Norse, even Hindu mythology in her family... My wife is Kali *and* Loki rolled into one I think. I have always been inspired by Kauffman's ideas as best I could understand them, which has been highly variable, depending on the circumstance. This says more about me than about Stu. I read his lecture notes in the late-nineties... the ones which ultimately became the core of _Investigations_ (or so it seemed to me). I had read _OofO_ and _At Home in the Universe_ previously. It may have been coincidence or something stronger like kismet that I read Investigations interleaved with my reading of Christopher Alexander's (Pattern Language fame) _Notes on the Synthesis of Form_ with D'Arcy Thompson's _On Growth and Form_ as backup reference. I was traveling lightly in New Zealand at the time with none of my usual distractions nagging me. It was a month of deep thought informed by Alexander and Kauffman equally. My nature is to be guarded around people with significant charisma (and me married into aforementioned pantheon!). I appreciate the need for and the value of the persuasive and the self-confident, even in the realm of science where ideas *by definition* must stand on their own. There is value for those who can bring us to *want* to believe enough to put in the hard work to believe things on their own merits. Unfortunately that might be the dividing line between science and Science(tm). I suppose I mistrust those who appear to be trying to corner the franchise on Science(tm) in their neighborhood. Nevertheless, I am *more* interested in Kauffman's ideas here and hope that we will discuss them a bit? - Steve ==**== 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.comhttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
I know Stu pretty well because we share two groups who have met fairly regularly in the past: we are both Lindisfarne Fellows, and Stu brought me into a deep dialogue group in Ottawa, Canada, on Complexity, Spirituality, and Reconciliation. Take a look at his new work on adjacent possibilities, it's worth the trip. Merle On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 4:44 PM, Russ Abbott russ.abb...@gmail.com wrote: It seems strange to me that Kauffman would focus on cause. (I'll admit that I got that from just looking at the start of the paper. Perhaps he goes in a different direction.) Science really doesn't think in terms of causes. As I understand it science thinks in terms of forces, particles, etc., and equations that relate them, but not causes. This is especially noticeable when considering that the equations work forwards and backwards. If one wants to think in terms of a forward (in time) cause that implies a parallel backward (in time) cause, which makes the whole cause notion much less useful. Steve, you mentioned Lamarkian evolution. I'd be very interested to find out more about some of your daughter's examples. *-- Russ Abbott* *_* *** Professor, Computer Science* * California State University, Los Angeles* * My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688* * Google voice: 747-*999-5105 Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/ * vita: *sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ CS Wiki http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/ and the courses I teach *_* On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 3:42 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Gary/Pamela/(Stephen, Carl, Eric, ...) - I know several (many?) on this list know Stu better than I... so I apologize if I sounded overly critical. I prefer Pamela's description of him being *careless* with references as opposed to my own use of the *honest*. I also admit that I do not know if he sees himself as a rock-star... that is perhaps the default category I put people in who are simultaneously *good*, *self-possessed* and *charismatic*. I actually *like* most rock stars (within reason) even if I might not care for their music. As an aside... does anyone remember Chris Langton appearing in Rolling Stone (CA 1990?)... I searched their archives and did not find any references (nor on the internet at large?). I remember the article including a sexed-up spread of him in front of a Connection Machine? I suppose I could be hallucinating or have come from an alternate history? I also smiled at your term demigod as I often use Titans to describe the pantheon of my wife's sibling group... she is oldest of 8 *mostly* high functioning, *very* charismatic, *definitely* self-possessed siblings. They all revered their father who was a humble but charismatic physics professor. None of them took up science per se, though one has a PhD in psychology. I would not use *rock star* to describe any of their self-image, though there is one who insists he *is* Elvis... and sometimes we are tempted to believe him. There are definitely characters right out of Greek, Roman, Norse, even Hindu mythology in her family... My wife is Kali *and* Loki rolled into one I think. I have always been inspired by Kauffman's ideas as best I could understand them, which has been highly variable, depending on the circumstance. This says more about me than about Stu. I read his lecture notes in the late-nineties... the ones which ultimately became the core of _Investigations_ (or so it seemed to me). I had read _OofO_ and _At Home in the Universe_ previously. It may have been coincidence or something stronger like kismet that I read Investigations interleaved with my reading of Christopher Alexander's (Pattern Language fame) _Notes on the Synthesis of Form_ with D'Arcy Thompson's _On Growth and Form_ as backup reference. I was traveling lightly in New Zealand at the time with none of my usual distractions nagging me. It was a month of deep thought informed by Alexander and Kauffman equally. My nature is to be guarded around people with significant charisma (and me married into aforementioned pantheon!). I appreciate the need for and the value of the persuasive and the self-confident, even in the realm of science where ideas *by definition* must stand on their own. There is value for those who can bring us to *want* to believe enough to put in the hard work to believe things on their own merits. Unfortunately that might be the dividing line between science and Science(tm). I suppose I mistrust those who appear to be trying to corner the franchise on Science(tm) in their neighborhood. Nevertheless, I am *more* interested in Kauffman's ideas here and hope that we will discuss them a bit? - Steve ==**== FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Steve, I didn't see you as unduly critical. Stu's work raises many questions, small and large. By me, that's fine. Great work does that. He's trying to overthrow a paradigm. I hope Stu's work is great. It might not be. He's good--at least in intimate conversation--at saying, of course I may be full of shit. You mention Chris Langton. He was also part of that small SFI group twenty years ago that would drop everything to answer your questions. To my utter delight, he showed up at a San Francisco party for one of my books a few years ago. I have great, great respect for him, and since nobody asked, I think the Institute in that part of its incarnation did not treat him well. Fascinating that you're married to a hybrid of Kali and Loki. Wow. P. On Mar 25, 2013, at 6:42 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Gary/Pamela/(Stephen, Carl, Eric, ...) - I know several (many?) on this list know Stu better than I... so I apologize if I sounded overly critical. I prefer Pamela's description of him being *careless* with references as opposed to my own use of the *honest*. I also admit that I do not know if he sees himself as a rock-star... that is perhaps the default category I put people in who are simultaneously *good*, *self-possessed* and *charismatic*. I actually *like* most rock stars (within reason) even if I might not care for their music. As an aside... does anyone remember Chris Langton appearing in Rolling Stone (CA 1990?)... I searched their archives and did not find any references (nor on the internet at large?). I remember the article including a sexed-up spread of him in front of a Connection Machine? I suppose I could be hallucinating or have come from an alternate history? I also smiled at your term demigod as I often use Titans to describe the pantheon of my wife's sibling group... she is oldest of 8 *mostly* high functioning, *very* charismatic, *definitely* self-possessed siblings. They all revered their father who was a humble but charismatic physics professor. None of them took up science per se, though one has a PhD in psychology. I would not use *rock star* to describe any of their self-image, though there is one who insists he *is* Elvis... and sometimes we are tempted to believe him. There are definitely characters right out of Greek, Roman, Norse, even Hindu mythology in her family... My wife is Kali *and* Loki rolled into one I think. I have always been inspired by Kauffman's ideas as best I could understand them, which has been highly variable, depending on the circumstance. This says more about me than about Stu. I read his lecture notes in the late-nineties... the ones which ultimately became the core of _Investigations_ (or so it seemed to me). I had read _OofO_ and _At Home in the Universe_ previously. It may have been coincidence or something stronger like kismet that I read Investigations interleaved with my reading of Christopher Alexander's (Pattern Language fame) _Notes on the Synthesis of Form_ with D'Arcy Thompson's _On Growth and Form_ as backup reference. I was traveling lightly in New Zealand at the time with none of my usual distractions nagging me. It was a month of deep thought informed by Alexander and Kauffman equally. My nature is to be guarded around people with significant charisma (and me married into aforementioned pantheon!). I appreciate the need for and the value of the persuasive and the self-confident, even in the realm of science where ideas *by definition* must stand on their own. There is value for those who can bring us to *want* to believe enough to put in the hard work to believe things on their own merits. Unfortunately that might be the dividing line between science and Science(tm). I suppose I mistrust those who appear to be trying to corner the franchise on Science(tm) in their neighborhood. Nevertheless, I am *more* interested in Kauffman's ideas here and hope that we will discuss them a bit? - Steve 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 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Pamela - You mention Chris Langton. He was also part of that small SFI group twenty years ago that would drop everything to answer your questions. To my utter delight, he showed up at a San Francisco party for one of my books a few years ago. I have great, great respect for him, and since nobody asked, I think the Institute in that part of its incarnation did not treat him well. I really valued Chris's acquaintanceship... I was peripheral in the early A-Life movement starting with the Cellular Automata and Evolution, Games, Life conferences at Los Alamos. I was sad when he dropped out. I understood that he was not treated well toward the end of his time at SFI as well. Last I heard (10 years ago?) he was living on a houseboat in Sausalito, enjoying life in the way only Chris can... glad to hear he showed at your party! I'd still love to sort out whether I'm wrong about his appearing in Rolling Stone... in my book Chris was a Rock Star. I know we have more than a few Swarmers here as well! Fascinating that you're married to a hybrid of Kali and Loki. Wow. Fascinating that i'm still alive (and married to her) what with all the tendencies toward beheading or at least tricking men into self-revelation. I have to admit, however, that sometimes I use her and her family almost as literary devices like the fictional Sufi Mullah Nasruddin. - Steve 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
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Science really doesn't think in terms of causes. Really, Russ? That's quite a sweeper, isn't it? Nick From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott Sent: Monday, March 25, 2013 4:45 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice It seems strange to me that Kauffman would focus on cause. (I'll admit that I got that from just looking at the start of the paper. Perhaps he goes in a different direction.) Science really doesn't think in terms of causes. As I understand it science thinks in terms of forces, particles, etc., and equations that relate them, but not causes. This is especially noticeable when considering that the equations work forwards and backwards. If one wants to think in terms of a forward (in time) cause that implies a parallel backward (in time) cause, which makes the whole cause notion much less useful. Steve, you mentioned Lamarkian evolution. I'd be very interested to find out more about some of your daughter's examples. -- Russ Abbott _ Professor, Computer Science California State University, Los Angeles My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688 Google voice: 747-999-5105 Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/ vita: http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ CS Wiki http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/ and the courses I teach _ On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 3:42 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Gary/Pamela/(Stephen, Carl, Eric, ...) - I know several (many?) on this list know Stu better than I... so I apologize if I sounded overly critical. I prefer Pamela's description of him being *careless* with references as opposed to my own use of the *honest*. I also admit that I do not know if he sees himself as a rock-star... that is perhaps the default category I put people in who are simultaneously *good*, *self-possessed* and *charismatic*. I actually *like* most rock stars (within reason) even if I might not care for their music. As an aside... does anyone remember Chris Langton appearing in Rolling Stone (CA 1990?)... I searched their archives and did not find any references (nor on the internet at large?). I remember the article including a sexed-up spread of him in front of a Connection Machine? I suppose I could be hallucinating or have come from an alternate history? I also smiled at your term demigod as I often use Titans to describe the pantheon of my wife's sibling group... she is oldest of 8 *mostly* high functioning, *very* charismatic, *definitely* self-possessed siblings. They all revered their father who was a humble but charismatic physics professor. None of them took up science per se, though one has a PhD in psychology. I would not use *rock star* to describe any of their self-image, though there is one who insists he *is* Elvis... and sometimes we are tempted to believe him. There are definitely characters right out of Greek, Roman, Norse, even Hindu mythology in her family... My wife is Kali *and* Loki rolled into one I think. I have always been inspired by Kauffman's ideas as best I could understand them, which has been highly variable, depending on the circumstance. This says more about me than about Stu. I read his lecture notes in the late-nineties... the ones which ultimately became the core of _Investigations_ (or so it seemed to me). I had read _OofO_ and _At Home in the Universe_ previously. It may have been coincidence or something stronger like kismet that I read Investigations interleaved with my reading of Christopher Alexander's (Pattern Language fame) _Notes on the Synthesis of Form_ with D'Arcy Thompson's _On Growth and Form_ as backup reference. I was traveling lightly in New Zealand at the time with none of my usual distractions nagging me. It was a month of deep thought informed by Alexander and Kauffman equally. My nature is to be guarded around people with significant charisma (and me married into aforementioned pantheon!). I appreciate the need for and the value of the persuasive and the self-confident, even in the realm of science where ideas *by definition* must stand on their own. There is value for those who can bring us to *want* to believe enough to put in the hard work to believe things on their own merits. Unfortunately that might be the dividing line between science and Science(tm). I suppose I mistrust those who appear to be trying to corner the franchise on Science(tm) in their neighborhood. Nevertheless, I am *more* interested in Kauffman's ideas here and hope that we will discuss them a bit? - Steve FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo
Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice
Russ, I don't know wtf I am. I have always thought of myself as a scientist, but I am sure that many on this list have their doubts. I am certainly not a hard scientist. I was hoping by my comment to lure you into a more lengthy explication of the idea that real scientists don't think in terms of causes. But now you have smoked me out instead, so here goes. Many of the philosophers I know, from time to time like to talk about causality as if it were a sophomoric illusion, citing Hume, or some sort of weird quantum theory. But that does not keep them from using causal reasoning freely in their everyday lives. I have never heard a philosopher who was reluctant to say things like my car stalled because it ran out of gas. I think what they mean when they deny causality is the denial of something that, as a behaviorist, I never thought to entertain: some deep gear-and-cog mechanism lurking behind experience. If one once concedes that all one means by causality is some forms of relation between previous and successive events such that a previous event makes a successive event more likely, then determining causality is just an exercise in experimentation. The sort of thing that all scientists do all the time. Thus, while causality may be unfounded in some fastidious philosophical sense, it is by no means empty. I'll quote below from a footnote from a paper we just wrote which tries to preempt criticism our use of causal arguments in the paper. The footnote makes reference to work by a colleague and friend of mine, here in Santa Fe, Frank Wimberly. I will copy him here to try and get him to speak up. He tends to lurk, until I say something really foolish, which no doubt I have. The whole paper is at http://www.behavior.org/resource.php?id=675 . So, here is the footnote: Some might argue that in falling back on a more vernacular understanding of causality we have paid too great a price in rigor. However, as our Seminar colleague Frank Wimberly pointed out, the vernacular understanding of casualty is potentially rigorous. Research investigating what aspects of the world lay people are sensitive to when assigning causality suggests people are sensitive to particular types of probabilistic relationships (Cheng, Novick, Liljeholm, Ford, 2007) and that certain types of experiments are better than others at revealing such relationships (Glymour Wimberly, 2007). Frank? Nick From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Russ Abbott Sent: Monday, March 25, 2013 11:05 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] beyond reductionism twice Nick, You're the scientist; I'm only a computer scientist. So you are more qualified to talk about science and cause. Do you think science organizes its theories in terms of causes? I see equations, entities, structures, geometries, and mechanisms, but I don't see causes. As I'm sure you know, the notion of cause is very slippery. I think science is better off without it. But I'm interested in your perspective. What do you think? https://app.yesware.com/t/ac60524099a2c2922efb3fea7fcd30ecf03a1482/851f757a 2285823ad6d3350e1f01df84/spacer.gif http://app.yesware.com/t/ac60524099a2c2922efb3fea7fcd30ecf03a1482/851f757a2 285823ad6d3350e1f01df84/spacer.gif [If this is a thread hijack, I apologize. I am very interested in the subject, though.] https://app.yesware.com/t/ac60524099a2c2922efb3fea7fcd30ecf03a1482/9e8cb4a2 ede661bd0c79d43ed37f8b20/spacer.gif http://app.yesware.com/t/ac60524099a2c2922efb3fea7fcd30ecf03a1482/9e8cb4a2e de661bd0c79d43ed37f8b20/spacer.gif -- Russ Abbott _ Professor, Computer Science California State University, Los Angeles My paper on how the Fed can fix the economy: ssrn.com/abstract=1977688 Google voice: 747-999-5105 Google+: plus.google.com/114865618166480775623/ vita: http://sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ sites.google.com/site/russabbott/ CS Wiki http://cs.calstatela.edu/wiki/ and the courses I teach _ On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 10:02 PM, Steve Smith sasm...@swcp.com wrote: Russ - Steve, you mentioned Lamarkian evolution. I'd be very interested to find out more about some of your daughter's examples. This was on a long drive from NM to OR last Thanksgiving... in the course of about 30 hours of driving we talked about a LOT of things. I am pretty sure this first exmaple is merely neo-Lamarckian or Lamarckianesque as they only applied to the single next generation. The germline of the child does not carry the changes, although if the child experiences the same conditions the parent did, the same epigenetic mechanisms would be in effect in the subsequent generation. This example had to to do with Long Term Potentiation (a feature of neural connectivity). What surprised me most was that this particular example
