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A pluralistic model of the mind?

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Prof David West

Re: [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?

Nick style larding follows:

On Thu, Dec 12, 2019, at 5:15 AM, Eric Charles wrote:

I think the effableness is a red herring. "Last night I ate spaghetti" doesn't fully and completely explain exactly what happened last night... but we all agree that I used words to describe a thing that is not "ineffable". So far, no argument has been offered to demonstrate that Dave's conversation with God is any more or less effable than my having eaten spaghetti

[DW-->in the case of speaking with God, I completely agree with you. In the second example, I was at least attempting to depict an 'X' that was truly ineffable, in that even asserting a label like 'Experience' is falsehood. I will leave that for another time and consider your other comments. <---dw]

Absent an argument to that effect, we are begging the question by taking it as given that the two differ. I think the more interesting issue that Dave's example brings up is our original issue regarding monism, in its relation to the question "what is real?"

[DW -->May I restate as a question of what criteria are sufficient to assert that something is not real? In a previous post you asserted that something is not real if it has no "effects;" and you seem to reiterate that assertion in your remarks about a Deist god having no current effects. Are "effects" the criteria, and if so how do we utilize them to determine the reality of 'X'? <-- dw]

We all agree that that Dave could have been having a conversation with something real or something not real, right? We can call the other option "imaginary" or "illusory" or whatever else we want to call it, but we recognize that people sometimes have conversations with those types of conversational partners, so it is a live possibility.

I said in prior emails, we are in-particular talking about "monism" in contrast to mind-matter dualism (and all variants of that particular dualism), meaning that we reject that mental things and matter things are made of two different stuffs.

[DW -->This is a key point that I would really appreciate a good monist to explain to me. Using a metaphor of a computer, there seems to be one kind of "stuff," the ones and zeros (high and low voltages) flowing about a set of circuits. But, any given sequence of ones and zeros can 'effect' a given state of the collective circuitry, and any given sequence of states can effect more comprehensible constructs like the screensaver of Bears Ears that appears behind this email window. The graphic is, of course, but ones and zeros. Ones and zeros is the "stuff" of all. What status have the "constructs" up to and including the images and icons? <--dw]

So Dave is talking to God. Whether he is talking to something that is "mental" or something "physical" is a post-hoc judgement. That is, we discover that based on future experience, not based on the initial experience, which is neutral with regards to that distinction. What later experiences will allow us to determine if the conversational partner is real? That is hard to specify when we are discussing a deity with ambiguous properties, but the method must be in principle very similar to how we would confirm or reject the reality of any other conversational partner. How do you determine when a child has an imaginary friend versus a real friend? You look for other consequences of the conversational partner. Ultimately we look for convergent agreement by anyone who honestly inquires into the existence of the conversational partner (i.e., the long term convergence / pattern-stability, referenced earlier in the conversation).

[DW -->I would argue that we have a body of precisely this kind of evidence, convergent agreement/pattern-stability, with regard "honest inquiries." I make this assertion with regard "goddness" but would make it emphatically with regard the "mystical otherness." That evidence does not, however, seem to result in the assignation of "Real" status. So something else must be in play. What? <--dw]

The only thing we can't allow - because it is internally incoherent - is for there to exist a "real" thing with "no consequences" that we could investigate. So the "Deist" God, the instigator with no current effects, is off the table a priori, because that is a description of a thing that doesn't exist --- and also because Dave couldn't have had a conversation with that. We could only be discussing a conception of God that can be interacted with to certain ends, which means that some tractable means of converging opinions one way or the other is possible.

[DW -->Whose opinions? Those on the FRIAM list? The public at large? Something akin to the "scientific community?" If the latter, why do not alchemists — in the general sense of the term, not the lead into gold caricature subset — constitute such a body? <--dw]

As such: Dave's conversation with God is not in-kind difference from John's seeing a bear in the woods: Both are equally effable/ineffable. Both have the same question about the reality of the thing experienced. Both can be subjected to the same types of analyses (I offered Peircian, Jamesian, or Holtian options regarding the bear).

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
American University - Adjunct Instructor

[hidden email]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 3:17 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:
The thing being left out of this still seems, to me, to be constructive vs ... what? ... analytical explanation. Your larger document beats around that bush quite a bit, I think. But I don't think it ever names/tackles the point explicitly.

When you say things like "explanations are based on prior explanations" and "depends on the understandings that exist between speaker and audience", you're leaving out THE fundamental ontology atop which it's all built ... the building of the experimental apparatus. Feynman's pithy aphorism applies: What I cannot create, I do not understand.

Explanations facilitate replication. They tell you *how* to do the trick yourself. Descriptions can be explanatory, of course. But they can also be non-explanatory. And some explanations are more facilitating than others. (E.g. I can write out some obtuse math and print it on paper or I can hand you a floppy disk with some Matlab code on it.)

But the foundation is that we all have the same basic hardware. And *that's* what explanations are built upon. Change the hardware and your explanation becomes mere description. ... E.g. take a big hit of LSD and many explanations become mere descriptions. The evolutionary biological content of your paper (as well as Figure 1.2[†]) seems like it's just crying out for something like "construction". Reading it feels like watching someone struggle for a word that's on the "tip of their tongue".

[†] In particular, if I replace "is the model for" with *generates*, I get some sort of Necker cube flipping feeling.

On 12/11/19 11:23 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> [... the thought experiment being explaining an eraser falling behind a book ...]
> Working through thought-experiments like the one above leads us to conclude that all descriptions, particularly satisfying ones, are inevitably explanatory and that all explanations are descriptive. And yet, you cannot explain something until you have something to explain – so all explanations must be based on prior descriptions. The only reasonable conclusion, if you take both of these claims at face value, is that all explanations are based on prior explanations! The distinction between description and explanation concerns their position in an argument, not their objectivity or subjectivity in some enduring sense. Whether a statement is explanatory or descriptive depends upon the understandings that exist between the speaker and his or her audience at the time the statement is made. /Descriptions are explanations that the speaker and the audience take to be true for the purpose of seeking further explanations/.[1] <#_ftn1>

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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John Kennison

Re: [EXT] Re: [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?

I'm pretty slow on the uptake in this conversation. I'm still thinking about there being no "out there". The language we use seems to be based on concepts such as "out there". So if "out there" makes no sense then our language is deeply flawed and, at best, an approximate instrument. It would hardly be surprising if there are things that our language cannot express. The same seems to be true of science which is based on experiments. The most fundamental kind of experiments seem to presume basic geometry which would, I think, involve a concept of "out there".

--John

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Prof David West <[hidden email]>
Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2019 7:34 AM
To: [hidden email] <[hidden email]>
Subject: [EXT] Re: [FRIAM] [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?

Nick style larding follows:

On Thu, Dec 12, 2019, at 5:15 AM, Eric Charles wrote:

I think the effableness is a red herring. "Last night I ate spaghetti" doesn't fully and completely explain exactly what happened last night... but we all agree that I used words to describe a thing that is not "ineffable". So far, no argument has been offered to demonstrate that Dave's conversation with God is any more or less effable than my having eaten spaghetti

[DW-->in the case of speaking with God, I completely agree with you. In the second example, I was at least attempting to depict an 'X' that was truly ineffable, in that even asserting a label like 'Experience' is falsehood. I will leave that for another time and consider your other comments. <---dw]

Absent an argument to that effect, we are begging the question by taking it as given that the two differ. I think the more interesting issue that Dave's example brings up is our original issue regarding monism, in its relation to the question "what is real?"

[DW -->May I restate as a question of what criteria are sufficient to assert that something is not real? In a previous post you asserted that something is not real if it has no "effects;" and you seem to reiterate that assertion in your remarks about a Deist god having no current effects. Are "effects" the criteria, and if so how do we utilize them to determine the reality of 'X'? <-- dw]

We all agree that that Dave could have been having a conversation with something real or something not real, right? We can call the other option "imaginary" or "illusory" or whatever else we want to call it, but we recognize that people sometimes have conversations with those types of conversational partners, so it is a live possibility.

I said in prior emails, we are in-particular talking about "monism" in contrast to mind-matter dualism (and all variants of that particular dualism), meaning that we reject that mental things and matter things are made of two different stuffs.

[DW -->This is a key point that I would really appreciate a good monist to explain to me. Using a metaphor of a computer, there seems to be one kind of "stuff," the ones and zeros (high and low voltages) flowing about a set of circuits. But, any given sequence of ones and zeros can 'effect' a given state of the collective circuitry, and any given sequence of states can effect more comprehensible constructs like the screensaver of Bears Ears that appears behind this email window. The graphic is, of course, but ones and zeros. Ones and zeros is the "stuff" of all. What status have the "constructs" up to and including the images and icons? <--dw]

So Dave is talking to God. Whether he is talking to something that is "mental" or something "physical" is a post-hoc judgement. That is, we discover that based on future experience, not based on the initial experience, which is neutral with regards to that distinction. What later experiences will allow us to determine if the conversational partner is real? That is hard to specify when we are discussing a deity with ambiguous properties, but the method must be in principle very similar to how we would confirm or reject the reality of any other conversational partner. How do you determine when a child has an imaginary friend versus a real friend? You look for other consequences of the conversational partner. Ultimately we look for convergent agreement by anyone who honestly inquires into the existence of the conversational partner (i.e., the long term convergence / pattern-stability, referenced earlier in the conversation).

[DW -->I would argue that we have a body of precisely this kind of evidence, convergent agreement/pattern-stability, with regard "honest inquiries." I make this assertion with regard "goddness" but would make it emphatically with regard the "mystical otherness." That evidence does not, however, seem to result in the assignation of "Real" status. So something else must be in play. What? <--dw]

The only thing we can't allow - because it is internally incoherent - is for there to exist a "real" thing with "no consequences" that we could investigate. So the "Deist" God, the instigator with no current effects, is off the table a priori, because that is a description of a thing that doesn't exist --- and also because Dave couldn't have had a conversation with that. We could only be discussing a conception of God that can be interacted with to certain ends, which means that some tractable means of converging opinions one way or the other is possible.

[DW -->Whose opinions? Those on the FRIAM list? The public at large? Something akin to the "scientific community?" If the latter, why do not alchemists — in the general sense of the term, not the lead into gold caricature subset — constitute such a body? <--dw]

As such: Dave's conversation with God is not in-kind difference from John's seeing a bear in the woods: Both are equally effable/ineffable. Both have the same question about the reality of the thing experienced. Both can be subjected to the same types of analyses (I offered Peircian, Jamesian, or Holtian options regarding the bear).

-----------

Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.

Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist

American University - Adjunct Instructor

[hidden email]

On Wed, Dec 11, 2019 at 3:17 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote:

The thing being left out of this still seems, to me, to be constructive vs ... what? ... analytical explanation. Your larger document beats around that bush quite a bit, I think. But I don't think it ever names/tackles the point explicitly.

When you say things like "explanations are based on prior explanations" and "depends on the understandings that exist between speaker and audience", you're leaving out THE fundamental ontology atop which it's all built ... the building of the experimental apparatus. Feynman's pithy aphorism applies: What I cannot create, I do not understand.

Explanations facilitate replication. They tell you *how* to do the trick yourself. Descriptions can be explanatory, of course. But they can also be non-explanatory. And some explanations are more facilitating than others. (E.g. I can write out some obtuse math and print it on paper or I can hand you a floppy disk with some Matlab code on it.)

But the foundation is that we all have the same basic hardware. And *that's* what explanations are built upon. Change the hardware and your explanation becomes mere description. ... E.g. take a big hit of LSD and many explanations become mere descriptions. The evolutionary biological content of your paper (as well as Figure 1.2[†]) seems like it's just crying out for something like "construction". Reading it feels like watching someone struggle for a word that's on the "tip of their tongue".

[†] In particular, if I replace "is the model for" with *generates*, I get some sort of Necker cube flipping feeling.

On 12/11/19 11:23 AM, [hidden email] wrote:

> [... the thought experiment being explaining an eraser falling behind a book ...]

> Working through thought-experiments like the one above leads us to conclude that all descriptions, particularly satisfying ones, are inevitably explanatory and that all explanations are descriptive. And yet, you cannot explain something until you have something to explain – so all explanations must be based on prior descriptions. The only reasonable conclusion, if you take both of these claims at face value, is that all explanations are based on prior explanations! The distinction between description and explanation concerns their position in an argument, not their objectivity or subjectivity in some enduring sense. Whether a statement is explanatory or descriptive depends upon the understandings that exist between the speaker and his or her audience at the time the statement is made. /Descriptions are explanations that the speaker and the audience take to be true for the purpose of seeking further explanations/.[1] <#_ftn1>

--

☣ uǝlƃ

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============================================================

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College

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gepr

constructive explanations (was Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?)

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

OK. I'm going to focus on this distinction. When you explain some thing to someone, you have a choice between 2 styles. You can tell them how to make it happen or you can tell them how that thing fits in with everything else. So, in your eraser behind the book setup, you focus on the latter. Erasers are this, books are that, eyeballs are this, gravity is that. But you *could* explain what's happening by providing the setup recipe and then saying "go do it... I'll wait." I.e. tell them to get a friend who sits some distance away, get a book, get an eraser, hold the eraser above and behind the book, drop the eraser.

That's the explanation. That is the "methods section". There is no more that we need to say. Anything you say after that is speculation and *should* be ignored.

So, if you're trying to "explain" killdeer behavior, you lay out a recipe for *creating* a killdeer ... maybe with a wrench and some pliers in your garage. If you cannot create a killdeer, then you cannot understand killdeer.

That's it. That's all I meant.

Now, you might think I'm throwing in the towel. But there are things we can do to remedy the impasse presented by not being able to create killdeer. We can make our descriptions of killdeer more constructive. For example, we can snatch one, put it into an aviary and *manipulate* it. Manipulation is the next best thing to creation. But, again, you don't need to skip to the end and "explain" why this, why that, how it fits in with the universe. All you need do to provide an explanation is to say *how* to make the killdeer *do* some behavior. A detailed recipe for how some other person can snatch their own killdeer and make it do things.

If you can reproducibly *generate* the behavior, then your recipe for doing so, is a constructive explanation.

On 12/11/19 9:01 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
> Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:17 PM
> To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?
>
> The thing being left out of this still seems, to me, to be constructive vs ... what? ... analytical explanation.
>
> Your larger document beats around that bush quite a bit, I think. But I don't think it ever names/tackles the point explicitly.
>
> */[NST===>] I am not sure I quite understand that distinction. Can you say more? /*

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

gepr

Re: [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?

In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2

Heh, it was Homotopy Type Theory I was accusing of being hoity-toity. 8^) But I think it's reasonable to argue that W. was pretty hoity-toity, as this story implies:

When Feyerabend Met Wittgenstein
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL600Mafzf0

Disclosure: Feyerabend is my favorite philosopher. Whether W. was *too* hoity-toity or not is another issue. But he certainly pushed the envelope in his response to Logik not being adequate for a bachelors: "If I am not worth your making an exception for me even in some STUPID details then I may as well go to Hell directly; and if I am worth it and you don't do it then—by God—you might go there." ... reminds me of some of the people I met while I was at the SFI. 8^)

On 12/11/19 8:08 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> Well, he elucidated the limitations of language including the concept that words produced by one human to describe an experience cannot cause another to have that same experience. Not too hoity-toity.

============================================================
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
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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

thompnickson2

Re: constructive explanations (was Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?)

In reply to this post by gepr

Hi, Glen,

I like what you wrote below .... a lot.

It is redolent with Pragmatism ... a concern with the "practicial", as Eric insists that I say. But there is something else lurking here which blind sided me and which I need to think hard about. It's the word "creation". Now, you computer folks are truly Gods to me; to me, you create stuff all the time. To me, perhaps in my naivety, one of those crazy-mad cellular automata, that's life and somebody has created it. Did Schelling create segregation. By god, I think he did. Did Steve Guerin create ants. Yup, by god, he did. So when a computer scientist, programmer, software engineer, ai person, whatever you guys prefer to call yourselves, starts talking about "creation", my ears perk up.

What the hell is the meaning of 'creation" in those sentences above? Here's a proposal: One has "created", when one has written a recipe for emergence. One collects stamps; one creates a cake.

Is it possible that my model of monism is based on my understanding of a line of code. It would not be the first time that a theory in once discipline was based on an imperfect understanding of another.

How you drive my thinking on!

Nick

Nick Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of glen?C
Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2019 7:47 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] constructive explanations (was Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?)

OK. I'm going to focus on this distinction. When you explain some thing to someone, you have a choice between 2 styles. You can tell them how to make it happen or you can tell them how that thing fits in with everything else. So, in your eraser behind the book setup, you focus on the latter. Erasers are this, books are that, eyeballs are this, gravity is that. But you *could* explain what's happening by providing the setup recipe and then saying "go do it... I'll wait." I.e. tell them to get a friend who sits some distance away, get a book, get an eraser, hold the eraser above and behind the book, drop the eraser.

That's the explanation. That is the "methods section". There is no more that we need to say. Anything you say after that is speculation and *should* be ignored.

So, if you're trying to "explain" killdeer behavior, you lay out a recipe for *creating* a killdeer ... maybe with a wrench and some pliers in your garage. If you cannot create a killdeer, then you cannot understand killdeer.

That's it. That's all I meant.

Now, you might think I'm throwing in the towel. But there are things we can do to remedy the impasse presented by not being able to create killdeer. We can make our descriptions of killdeer more constructive. For example, we can snatch one, put it into an aviary and *manipulate* it. Manipulation is the next best thing to creation. But, again, you don't need to skip to the end and "explain" why this, why that, how it fits in with the universe. All you need do to provide an explanation is to say *how* to make the killdeer *do* some behavior. A detailed recipe for how some other person can snatch their own killdeer and make it do things.

If you can reproducibly *generate* the behavior, then your recipe for doing so, is a constructive explanation.

On 12/11/19 9:01 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

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============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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gepr

Re: constructive explanations (was Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?)

Heh, I worried you (or someone else) might go there, which is why I included the addendum about manipulation. There are some of us (me included) who think there is no such thing as creation or innovation, only differentiation and manipulation. But others allow for wide or narrow definitions of it. I have a whole constellation of colleagues who believe "innovation" is a real thing, for example. I've also mentioned on this list that I like the word "naturfact" to indicate something modified by humans, as opposed to an "artifact", which seems to carry an implication of pure synthesis.

So, if we adopt the manipulationist conception of constructive explanations, we don't need to go down the rabbit hole of "what is creation". You're still under requirement by Feynman, which I'll rephrase:

If you can't *make* it happen, then you don't understand it.

E.g. I can't, for my life, tell a joke. Therefore, I clearly don't understand humor. But to answer more directly, as Dave pointed out, a line of code is just another arrangement of the 1s and 0s extant in the machine in the form of high and low voltage. So, a line of code is nothing more than an arrangement of extant stuff, a naturfact, as it were. And where did the 1s and 0s come from(?), some other constructive explanations like how to make a transistor. And where did that come from? Etc.

This is what you're paper cries out for. A tutorial on how to write the Methods section of bench science paper.

On 12/12/19 9:24 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
> It is redolent with Pragmatism ... a concern with the "practicial", as Eric insists that I say. But there is something else lurking here which blind sided me and which I need to think hard about. It's the word "creation". Now, you computer folks are truly Gods to me; to me, you create stuff all the time. To me, perhaps in my naivety, one of those crazy-mad cellular automata, that's life and somebody has created it. Did Schelling create segregation. By god, I think he did. Did Steve Guerin create ants. Yup, by god, he did. So when a computer scientist, programmer, software engineer, ai person, whatever you guys prefer to call yourselves, starts talking about "creation", my ears perk up.
>
> What the hell is the meaning of 'creation" in those sentences above? Here's a proposal: One has "created", when one has written a recipe for emergence. One collects stamps; one creates a cake.
>
> Is it possible that my model of monism is based on my understanding of a line of code. It would not be the first time that a theory in once discipline was based on an imperfect understanding of another.
>
> How you drive my thinking on!

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

gepr

Re: constructive explanations (was Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?)

[sorry] And please note that I didn't say "If you *can* make it happen, then you *do* understand it." That's not true. Just because I digest my food doesn't mean I understand food digestion, despite it being a constructive proof of the existence of digestion. The making is necessary for understanding, but maybe not sufficient.

On 12/12/19 9:38 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:

> Heh, I worried you (or someone else) might go there, which is why I included the addendum about manipulation. There are some of us (me included) who think there is no such thing as creation or innovation, only differentiation and manipulation. But others allow for wide or narrow definitions of it. I have a whole constellation of colleagues who believe "innovation" is a real thing, for example. I've also mentioned on this list that I like the word "naturfact" to indicate something modified by humans, as opposed to an "artifact", which seems to carry an implication of pure synthesis.
>
> So, if we adopt the manipulationist conception of constructive explanations, we don't need to go down the rabbit hole of "what is creation". You're still under requirement by Feynman, which I'll rephrase:
>
> If you can't *make* it happen, then you don't understand it.
>
> E.g. I can't, for my life, tell a joke. Therefore, I clearly don't understand humor. But to answer more directly, as Dave pointed out, a line of code is just another arrangement of the 1s and 0s extant in the machine in the form of high and low voltage. So, a line of code is nothing more than an arrangement of extant stuff, a naturfact, as it were. And where did the 1s and 0s come from(?), some other constructive explanations like how to make a transistor. And where did that come from? Etc.
>
> This is what you're paper cries out for. A tutorial on how to write the Methods section of bench science paper.
>
> On 12/12/19 9:24 AM, [hidden email] wrote:
>> It is redolent with Pragmatism ... a concern with the "practicial", as Eric insists that I say. But there is something else lurking here which blind sided me and which I need to think hard about. It's the word "creation". Now, you computer folks are truly Gods to me; to me, you create stuff all the time. To me, perhaps in my naivety, one of those crazy-mad cellular automata, that's life and somebody has created it. Did Schelling create segregation. By god, I think he did. Did Steve Guerin create ants. Yup, by god, he did. So when a computer scientist, programmer, software engineer, ai person, whatever you guys prefer to call yourselves, starts talking about "creation", my ears perk up.
>>
>> What the hell is the meaning of 'creation" in those sentences above? Here's a proposal: One has "created", when one has written a recipe for emergence. One collects stamps; one creates a cake.
>>
>> Is it possible that my model of monism is based on my understanding of a line of code. It would not be the first time that a theory in once discipline was based on an imperfect understanding of another.
>>
>> How you drive my thinking on!
>

--
☣ uǝlƃ

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uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Prof David West

Digital Monism — was (re: constructive explanations which (was Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?))

In reply to this post by thompnickson2

re: creation

"Design," is associated, in contemporary times, with novelty, creation, and innovation — something that "springs forth in the mind of the designer, appearing from nowhere and grounded only in the genius of the designer." [West & Rikner, Design Thinking, 2018]

This is antithetical to roots of the term in ancient Greek (according to Kostas Terzdis, Harvard Graduate School of Design) - 'de' in the constructive sense of derivation, deduction, or inference + schedio from the root schedon which means nearly, almost, about, or approximately. Schedon derives from eschein (past tense of eho) which means have, ho9ld, or possess. Design, for the Greeks was about something we once had, but have no longer.

Design, now, is about stepping into the future; for the Greeks it meant recovering something lost in the past. The word "sketch" has similar ancient roots and when you sketch you are not creating, you are recalling something from, often primordial, memory.

This makes sense, philosophically, since the earliest uses of these terms was in the age of Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno who held the position that nothing could come from nothing, nor return to it. No 'creation" as we understand it, no "destruction."

Programmers, (with their patent and copyright attorneys at their elbow) like to think they are "creating" in the modern sense of the term. Really great programmers — Dykstra (with the first Algol compiler), Parnas, Cray and Chen (Cray I operating system), Ward Cunningham (Wiki), and others I have known or read about — are less quick to take credit for the product of their activity. Like novelists, the often use the metaphor of "channeling" the novel or the program as it expresses itself via their brain and fingers. Object programs that I would consider to be excellent in every way were written by programmers letting the objects express themselves the same way that a novelist allows characters to express themselves.

These ideas were recalled to mind as I thought about the "digital monism" inherent in the Turing Machine metaphor discussed earlier.

There is but one "stuff" — bits (albeit with two values).

"Data," "Programs," and "Virtual Machines" are but ordered bits.

Sensible expressions (sound, images, even matter) are directly reducible to ordered bits.

Neat and clean, BUT, from whence the "ordering?" Plato might suggest the realm of ideals; Descartes, the mind of God, the quantum scientist, the collectivity of observers. [The last explanation gets circular real fast.]

Earlier I suggested that there might be but one Turing Machine and one Infinite Tape, each and both of which are co-extensive with the Universe. If that were so ...

... is The Universe "creating itself," modern sense; or "remembering itself," ancient Greek roots sense?

No, this posting is not the result of evening with Molly and Lucy. (MDMA and LSD)

davew

On Thu, Dec 12, 2019, at 6:24 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

> Hi, Glen,
>
> I like what you wrote below .... a lot.
>
> It is redolent with Pragmatism ... a concern with the "practicial", as
> Eric insists that I say. But there is something else lurking here
> which blind sided me and which I need to think hard about. It's the
> word "creation". Now, you computer folks are truly Gods to me; to me,
> you create stuff all the time. To me, perhaps in my naivety, one of
> those crazy-mad cellular automata, that's life and somebody has created
> it. Did Schelling create segregation. By god, I think he did. Did
> Steve Guerin create ants. Yup, by god, he did. So when a computer
> scientist, programmer, software engineer, ai person, whatever you guys
> prefer to call yourselves, starts talking about "creation", my ears
> perk up.
>
> What the hell is the meaning of 'creation" in those sentences above?
> Here's a proposal: One has "created", when one has written a recipe
> for emergence. One collects stamps; one creates a cake.
>
> Is it possible that my model of monism is based on my understanding of
> a line of code. It would not be the first time that a theory in once
> discipline was based on an imperfect understanding of another.
>
> How you drive my thinking on!
>
> Nick
>
>
> Nick Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> [hidden email]
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of glen?C
> Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2019 7:47 AM
> To: [hidden email]
> Subject: [FRIAM] constructive explanations (was Re: A pluralistic model
> of the mind?)
>
> OK. I'm going to focus on this distinction. When you explain some thing
> to someone, you have a choice between 2 styles. You can tell them how
> to make it happen or you can tell them how that thing fits in with
> everything else. So, in your eraser behind the book setup, you focus on
> the latter. Erasers are this, books are that, eyeballs are this,
> gravity is that. But you *could* explain what's happening by providing
> the setup recipe and then saying "go do it... I'll wait." I.e. tell
> them to get a friend who sits some distance away, get a book, get an
> eraser, hold the eraser above and behind the book, drop the eraser.
>
> That's the explanation. That is the "methods section". There is no more
> that we need to say. Anything you say after that is speculation and
> *should* be ignored.
>
> So, if you're trying to "explain" killdeer behavior, you lay out a
> recipe for *creating* a killdeer ... maybe with a wrench and some
> pliers in your garage. If you cannot create a killdeer, then you cannot
> understand killdeer.
>
> That's it. That's all I meant.
>
> Now, you might think I'm throwing in the towel. But there are things we
> can do to remedy the impasse presented by not being able to create
> killdeer. We can make our descriptions of killdeer more constructive.
> For example, we can snatch one, put it into an aviary and *manipulate*
> it. Manipulation is the next best thing to creation. But, again, you
> don't need to skip to the end and "explain" why this, why that, how it
> fits in with the universe. All you need do to provide an explanation is
> to say *how* to make the killdeer *do* some behavior. A detailed recipe
> for how some other person can snatch their own killdeer and make it do
> things.
>
> If you can reproducibly *generate* the behavior, then your recipe for
> doing so, is a constructive explanation.
>
> On 12/11/19 9:01 PM, [hidden email] wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
> > Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:17 PM
> > To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?
> >
> > The thing being left out of this still seems, to me, to be constructive vs ... what? ... analytical explanation.
> >
> > Your larger document beats around that bush quite a bit, I think. But I don't think it ever names/tackles the point explicitly.
> >
> > */[NST===>] I am not sure I quite understand that distinction. Can
> > you say more? /*
>
> ============================================================
> 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
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>
>
> ============================================================
> 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
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
>

thompnickson2

Re: Digital Monism — was (re: constructive explanations which (was Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?))

Hi, Dave,

I have to think about what you say here, apart from the etymology.

Speaking of etymology, I can't tell if etymonline SUPPLEMENTS or DISPUTES your etymology of "design". See what you think. Here it is:

design (v.)

late 14c., "to make, shape," ultimately from Latin designare "mark out, point out; devise; choose, designate, appoint," from de "out" (see de-) + signare "to mark," from signum "identifying mark, sign" (see sign (n.)).

The Italian verb disegnare in 16c. developed the senses "to contrive, plot, intend," and "to draw, paint, embroider, etc." French took both these senses from Italian, in different forms, and passed them on to English, which uses design in all senses.

From 1540s as "to plan or outline, form a scheme;" from 1703 as "to contrive for a purpose." Transitive sense of "draw the outline or figure of," especially of a proposed work, is from 1630s; meaning "plan and execute, fashion with artistic skill" is from 1660s. Intransitive sense of "do original work in a graphic or plastic art" is by 1854. Also used in 17c. English with the meaning now attached to designate. Related: Designed; designing.

design (n.)

1580s, "a scheme or plan in the mind," from Middle French desseign, desseing "purpose, project, design," from the verb in French (see design (v.)). Especially "an intention to act in some particular way," often to do something harmful or illegal (1704); compare designing. Meaning "adoption of means to an end" is from 1660s.

In art, "a drawing, especially an outline," 1630s. The artistic sense was taken into French as dessin from Italian disegno, from disegnare "to mark out," from Latin designare "mark out, devise, choose, designate, appoint" (which is also ultimately the source of the English verb), from de "out" (see de-) + signare "to mark," from signum "identifying mark, sign" (see sign (n.)).

[T]he artistic sense was taken into Fr. and gradually differentiated in spelling, so that in mod.F. dessein is 'purpose, plan', dessin 'design in art'. Eng. on the contrary uses design, conformed to the verb, in both senses. [OED]

General (non-scheming) meaning "a plan our outline" is from 1590s. Meaning "the practical application of artistic principles" is from 1630s. Sense of "artistic details that go to make up an edifice, artistic creation, or decorative work" is from 1640s.

Related Entries

Nick Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Wednesday, December 18, 2019 8:21 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [FRIAM] Digital Monism — was (re: constructive explanations which (was Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?))

re: creation

"Design," is associated, in contemporary times, with novelty, creation, and innovation — something that "springs forth in the mind of the designer, appearing from nowhere and grounded only in the genius of the designer." [West & Rikner, Design Thinking, 2018]

This is antithetical to roots of the term in ancient Greek (according to Kostas Terzdis, Harvard Graduate School of Design) - 'de' in the constructive sense of derivation, deduction, or inference + schedio from the root schedon which means nearly, almost, about, or approximately. Schedon derives from eschein (past tense of eho) which means have, ho9ld, or possess. Design, for the Greeks was about something we once had, but have no longer.

Design, now, is about stepping into the future; for the Greeks it meant recovering something lost in the past. The word "sketch" has similar ancient roots and when you sketch you are not creating, you are recalling something from, often primordial, memory.

This makes sense, philosophically, since the earliest uses of these terms was in the age of Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno who held the position that nothing could come from nothing, nor return to it. No 'creation" as we understand it, no "destruction."

Programmers, (with their patent and copyright attorneys at their elbow) like to think they are "creating" in the modern sense of the term. Really great programmers — Dykstra (with the first Algol compiler), Parnas, Cray and Chen (Cray I operating system), Ward Cunningham (Wiki), and others I have known or read about — are less quick to take credit for the product of their activity. Like novelists, the often use the metaphor of "channeling" the novel or the program as it expresses itself via their brain and fingers. Object programs that I would consider to be excellent in every way were written by programmers letting the objects express themselves the same way that a novelist allows characters to express themselves.

These ideas were recalled to mind as I thought about the "digital monism" inherent in the Turing Machine metaphor discussed earlier.

There is but one "stuff" — bits (albeit with two values).

"Data," "Programs," and "Virtual Machines" are but ordered bits.

Sensible expressions (sound, images, even matter) are directly reducible to ordered bits.

Neat and clean, BUT, from whence the "ordering?" Plato might suggest the realm of ideals; Descartes, the mind of God, the quantum scientist, the collectivity of observers. [The last explanation gets circular real fast.]

Earlier I suggested that there might be but one Turing Machine and one Infinite Tape, each and both of which are co-extensive with the Universe. If that were so ...

... is The Universe "creating itself," modern sense; or "remembering itself," ancient Greek roots sense?

No, this posting is not the result of evening with Molly and Lucy. (MDMA and LSD)

davew

On Thu, Dec 12, 2019, at 6:24 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

> Hi, Glen,

> I like what you wrote below .... a lot.

> It is redolent with Pragmatism ... a concern with the "practicial", as

> Eric insists that I say. But there is something else lurking here

> which blind sided me and which I need to think hard about. It's the

> word "creation". Now, you computer folks are truly Gods to me; to me,

> you create stuff all the time. To me, perhaps in my naivety, one of

> those crazy-mad cellular automata, that's life and somebody has

> created it. Did Schelling create segregation. By god, I think he

> did. Did Steve Guerin create ants. Yup, by god, he did. So when a

> computer scientist, programmer, software engineer, ai person, whatever

> you guys prefer to call yourselves, starts talking about "creation",

> my ears perk up.

> What the hell is the meaning of 'creation" in those sentences above?

> Here's a proposal: One has "created", when one has written a recipe

> for emergence. One collects stamps; one creates a cake.

> Is it possible that my model of monism is based on my understanding of

> a line of code. It would not be the first time that a theory in once

> discipline was based on an imperfect understanding of another.

> How you drive my thinking on!

> Nick

> Nick Thompson

> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology Clark University

> [hidden email] https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

> -----Original Message-----

> From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of glen?C

> Sent: Thursday, December 12, 2019 7:47 AM

> To: [hidden email]

> Subject: [FRIAM] constructive explanations (was Re: A pluralistic model

> of the mind?)

> OK. I'm going to focus on this distinction. When you explain some thing

> to someone, you have a choice between 2 styles. You can tell them how

> to make it happen or you can tell them how that thing fits in with

> everything else. So, in your eraser behind the book setup, you focus on

> the latter. Erasers are this, books are that, eyeballs are this,

> gravity is that. But you *could* explain what's happening by providing

> the setup recipe and then saying "go do it... I'll wait." I.e. tell

> them to get a friend who sits some distance away, get a book, get an

> eraser, hold the eraser above and behind the book, drop the eraser.

> That's the explanation. That is the "methods section". There is no more

> that we need to say. Anything you say after that is speculation and

> *should* be ignored.

> So, if you're trying to "explain" killdeer behavior, you lay out a

> recipe for *creating* a killdeer ... maybe with a wrench and some

> pliers in your garage. If you cannot create a killdeer, then you cannot

> understand killdeer.

> That's it. That's all I meant.

> Now, you might think I'm throwing in the towel. But there are things we

> can do to remedy the impasse presented by not being able to create

> killdeer. We can make our descriptions of killdeer more constructive.

> For example, we can snatch one, put it into an aviary and *manipulate*

> it. Manipulation is the next best thing to creation. But, again, you

> don't need to skip to the end and "explain" why this, why that, how it

> fits in with the universe. All you need do to provide an explanation is

> to say *how* to make the killdeer *do* some behavior. A detailed recipe

> for how some other person can snatch their own killdeer and make it do

> things.

> If you can reproducibly *generate* the behavior, then your recipe for

> doing so, is a constructive explanation.

> On 12/11/19 9:01 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----

> > From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of u?l? ?

> > Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:17 PM

> > To: FriAM <[hidden email]>

> > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?

> >

> > The thing being left out of this still seems, to me, to be constructive vs ... what? ... analytical explanation.

> >

> > Your larger document beats around that bush quite a bit, I think. But I don't think it ever names/tackles the point explicitly.

> >

> > */[NST===>] I am not sure I quite understand that distinction. Can

> > you say more? /*

> ============================================================

> 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

> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

> ============================================================

> 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

> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================

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

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

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