Fair point if he was talking about science and how its done. But it
seems to me this was about ontology. (Yeah, he's got some chops in
science and engineering, and yeah, the referral was from Corfield who
worries a lot about how math communities work, but this is maybe not
about science per se, but only by way of illustration of a more
philosophical point). The footnote on the mesosome re
instrumentalities example might be of interest.
I do like the robustness definition. I did not see where secondary
properties were accessible only through 'one sense' (in any case, there
are a lot of taste buds and the brain areas they're connected to overlap
- yeah, salt tastes salty, but what is necessary and sufficient (re
Okham's safety razor) for that? Access 'points' (I want another word
but its late) here are not necessarily people or even agents).
best,
C.
Russ Abbott wrote:
Here's what Wimsatt says about how to decide what's real (from the
Ontology of Complex Systems
<http://www.institutnicod.org/Reduction/7.OntComplSys.pdf> paper, page
2).
Before I say what there is in this complex world, I should give my
criteria for regarding something as real or trustworthy. ... I want
criteria for what is real which are decidedly local--which are the
kinds of criteria used by working scientists in deciding whether
results are "real" or artifactual, trustworthy or untrustworthy,
"objective" or "subjective" (in contexts where the latter is
legitimately criticized--which is not everywhere). When this criterion
is used, eliminative reductionism is seen as generally unsound, and
entities at a variety of levels--as well as the levels themselves--can
be recognized for the real objects they are ...
Following Levins (1966), I call this criterion robustness. ...
/*Things are robust if they are accessible (detectable, measureable,
derivable, defineable, produceable, or the like) in a variety of
independent ways.*/ [emphasis in the original]
It seems to me that most branches of modern science (particle physics,
astronomy, neuro-anatomy, ...) rely on tools to see what's real, and
those tools do not provide a variety of independent ways to access
them. It feels initially intuitively comforting to say that one wants
a variety of independent way to perceive something before deciding
that it is real. But I don't think that's how science works.
Also, the point is not reproducibility. Wimsett refers to the old
distinction between primary and secondary properties to illustrate his
point.The secondary properties are accessible through only one sense,
e.g., sight (for color), taste (for taste), etc. But they are
certainly reproducible. Everyone will agree that salt tastes salty.
Yet taste is considered a secondary property.
That's as far as I've gotten in the paper so far. But I thought it was
worth raising this issue.
-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
o Check out my blog at http://russabbott.blogspot.com/
On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 8:46 PM, Carl Tollander <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
Of late, I've become interested (AKA "mildly obsessed") in/with
William Wimsatt's work. (hmmm, U of Chicago, aren't some folks
recently in the news from there?) Always liked the notion of
processes selecting for accessibility (to maybe see what I'm
talking about, study the Hasegawa dyptich at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_(negative_space)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_%28negative_space%29> for a few
minutes/hours). Not to mention the whole Occam's Razor show at
the SF Complex continues to reverberate with the local Taiko folk
and Wimsatt's paper has some insights there in the first several
pages. So anyhow, "interested", so here, have a pod...
>From N-Category Cafe, originally -
http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2008/11/mathematical_robustness.html
Thence to the eminently devourable paper:
http://www.institutnicod.org/Reduction/7.OntComplSys.pdf
(pictures are worth several hundred words).
and then to the interviews at:
http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/071004/limited-beings.shtml (Nicely
assembled, short, pithy.)
which refer to his book: http://tinyurl.com/66zxgp
which I will order soon from my meager resources if no one stops me.
C.
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