Heh, that's completely inverted. You're claiming that fewer interactions between the individual and its environment imply a tighter coupling between them. I'm claiming that more interactions between them imply a tighter coupling.
Maybe think about it this way. Imagine 2 androids (no "beliefs", just behaviors) lying on tables in a lab. Android A reaches down with an arm to touch the ground, then moves its legs and gets off the table. We can count 2 (coarse) interactions with the ground: touching it, then standing on it. Android B just gets off the table without touching it first. We count 1 (coarse) interaction. You claim Android B is more tightly coupled with the ground than Android A. I claim Android A is more tightly coupled with the ground than Android B. ### On 03/28/2018 07:23 PM, Eric Charles wrote: > Glen... I quite confused as to what you mean by tight and loose control... > > Let us take the case of belief in a tight relationship between my height off > the ground and my likelihood of being injured in a jump. If I firmly believe > that, then whether or not I jump is tightly coupled with the height. If I > doubt such a relationship exists, then the height I find myself at will be > only loosely coupled with my likelihood of jumping... right? Is that not the > type of thing you are referring to with "tight" and "loose" control? > > Either way, Peirce is more interested in the higher-order question of what > leads beliefs to be stable. There are many answers to that question (see his > "Fixation of Belief"), though the interesting answer, the one he tries to > elaborate for the rest of his life, is fixation via the scientific process, > in which beliefs stabilize (control behavior more tightly) as their > implications attain in practice, and destabilize (control behavior more > loosely) as their implications fail to attain in practice. In that context, > the scientific context, "Truth" or "Real" are odd terms we use to refer to > those things for which all implications will attain in the very, very long > run. > > (... which might, in the very, very long run, turn out to be almost > nothing...) > > So, there is, on the one hand, something to be said about the "control" that > is the belief itself, and something else to be said about the "control" that > is the sociological stability of the belief and the basis of that stability. > > In your case of the "dead horse" of putting feet on the floor, the "tight > coupling" is what happens when one acts their entire daily life without once > checking the belief. Doubt makes one put ones feet down tentatively, makes > one walk with caution. The relation of the person to the floor gets looser as > doubt increases... doesn't it? The person who firmly believes the floor is > there acts towards it unhesitatingly the whole day, thousands of times; his > behavior is tightly coupled to a floor being present... as becomes obvious in > a dramatic fall if it isn't. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ 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-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
