Friam

Abduction

Classic

List

Threaded

170 messages Options

1 ... 3456789

Nick Thompson

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

Once again, I am lost in my own thread.

I will say this: often it seems, with both Marcus, and Glen, and even Owen and Steve, and to a lesser extent Dave West, that their (your) thinking is rooted in models from coding and because I have never been a coder those models are utterly unavailable to me. I have always ... since childhood ...believed that if I worked hard enough at something I could understand it. And so, almost 14 years ago, when I was cast loose in Santa Fe, and Steve and Owen and Carl and Frank took me into that jammed freezing cold office on Agua Fria. They fed me when I was intellectually hungry and comforted me when I was intellectually lonely, and in gratitude, I was determined to understand their mindset. But despite all that I have learned since that time, I have come to admit that there are probably chasms of thought too deep for people to reach across … or, at least, people like me, at this age. I simply lack the models, the commonplace toys of thought, with which you guys so effortlessly play.

I will keep trying, of course, But I thought, perhaps, being the New Year and all, now was a moment to stop and thank FRIAM members for your patience, your indulgence, and your profound commitment to teaching that has kept me alert and engaged and alive these last 14 years.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of ? u???
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2019 8:48 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Excellent! I like everything you've said below. In fact, were we able to clearly talk about heterarchies as explicitly externalizing controls, where hierarchies leave the source(s) of control ambiguous, then we'd map nicely back to Marcus' example of "serializing" a recursive function into a tree walkable by a single control pointer. And we'd also be able to discuss Rosen's conception of separating a closure of agency from (an openness to) the other types of cause (material, formal, and final).

The concept of a heterarchy facilitates the discussion of systemic behaviors like motive as separable into sets of distinct causes and structures in a way the concept of hierarchy does not.

On 1/7/19 6:12 PM, Eric Charles wrote:

> Thanks for the clarification. I intentionally said Nick was invoking

> *something like "levels of analysis" talk, *because I thought I

> recalled Nick telling me at some point that he didn't like that way of

> thinking, and I'm surprised he hasn't disavowed me more completely on

> it. All metaphors are imperfect, and, acknowledging that, I still like

> that way of talking a lot.

> While you are quite right that tissue isn't literally JUST an

> arrangement of cells, it *is *pretty fair to say tissue is an bunch of

> cells arranged-in-a-structured-fashion and interconnected by various

> inter-cellular structures.... organs are a bunch of tissues

> arranged-in-a-structured-fashion and interconnected by various

> inter-tissue structures, etc.

> At any rate... trying to follow your lead, and translate your

> preferred sentence structure to be more like what (I assert) Nick is thinking:

> Motives ARE a particular type of pattern in a behavior-by-environment

> matrix.

> As a "point of view" based Realism, which Nick has been trying to

> emphasize, it is true that there are many ways the

> behavior-by-environment matrix can be constructed and arranged. Some

> of those ways will reveal the relevant pattern in some instances,

> others will not. The particular pattern is one in which the behavior

> vary across circumstances so as to stay directed towards the

> production of a particular outcome. This sounds very similar to "One

> of the definitions of "heterarchy" is that the components can be

> organized in multiple ways" but if I understood the prior discussion

> of "heterarchy", I take it that concept is about a flexibility in

> control/leadership, whereas no control is implied here (control being

> a different pattern in a different matrix). The cause of the pattern

> is a different matter entirely from the existence of the pattern -

> which is expressly part of the point of Nick's way of approaching it, i.e.,that a "motive" must be identifiable independent of a particular cause.

∄ uǝʃƃ

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

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

Robert Holmes-3

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

Nick,

This seems to be an issue of Wittgenstein's Lion

—R

On Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 11:04 AM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Once again, I am lost in my own thread.

I will say this: often it seems, with both Marcus, and Glen, and even Owen and Steve, and to a lesser extent Dave West, that their (your) thinking is rooted in models from coding and because I have never been a coder those models are utterly unavailable to me. I have always ... since childhood ...believed that if I worked hard enough at something I could understand it. And so, almost 14 years ago, when I was cast loose in Santa Fe, and Steve and Owen and Carl and Frank took me into that jammed freezing cold office on Agua Fria. They fed me when I was intellectually hungry and comforted me when I was intellectually lonely, and in gratitude, I was determined to understand their mindset. But despite all that I have learned since that time, I have come to admit that there are probably chasms of thought too deep for people to reach across … or, at least, people like me, at this age. I simply lack the models, the commonplace toys of thought, with which you guys so effortlessly play.

I will keep trying, of course, But I thought, perhaps, being the New Year and all, now was a moment to stop and thank FRIAM members for your patience, your indulgence, and your profound commitment to teaching that has kept me alert and engaged and alive these last 14 years.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of ? u???
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2019 8:48 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Excellent! I like everything you've said below. In fact, were we able to clearly talk about heterarchies as explicitly externalizing controls, where hierarchies leave the source(s) of control ambiguous, then we'd map nicely back to Marcus' example of "serializing" a recursive function into a tree walkable by a single control pointer. And we'd also be able to discuss Rosen's conception of separating a closure of agency from (an openness to) the other types of cause (material, formal, and final).

The concept of a heterarchy facilitates the discussion of systemic behaviors like motive as separable into sets of distinct causes and structures in a way the concept of hierarchy does not.

On 1/7/19 6:12 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Thanks for the clarification. I intentionally said Nick was invoking
> *something like "levels of analysis" talk, *because I thought I
> recalled Nick telling me at some point that he didn't like that way of
> thinking, and I'm surprised he hasn't disavowed me more completely on
> it. All metaphors are imperfect, and, acknowledging that, I still like
> that way of talking a lot.
> While you are quite right that tissue isn't literally JUST an
> arrangement of cells, it *is *pretty fair to say tissue is an bunch of
> cells arranged-in-a-structured-fashion and interconnected by various
> inter-cellular structures.... organs are a bunch of tissues
> arranged-in-a-structured-fashion and interconnected by various
> inter-tissue structures, etc.
>
> At any rate... trying to follow your lead, and translate your
> preferred sentence structure to be more like what (I assert) Nick is thinking:
>
> Motives ARE a particular type of pattern in a behavior-by-environment
> matrix.
>
> As a "point of view" based Realism, which Nick has been trying to
> emphasize, it is true that there are many ways the
> behavior-by-environment matrix can be constructed and arranged. Some
> of those ways will reveal the relevant pattern in some instances,
> others will not. The particular pattern is one in which the behavior
> vary across circumstances so as to stay directed towards the
> production of a particular outcome. This sounds very similar to "One
> of the definitions of "heterarchy" is that the components can be
> organized in multiple ways" but if I understood the prior discussion
> of "heterarchy", I take it that concept is about a flexibility in
> control/leadership, whereas no control is implied here (control being
> a different pattern in a different matrix). The cause of the pattern
> is a different matter entirely from the existence of the pattern -
> which is expressly part of the point of Nick's way of approaching it, i.e.,that a "motive" must be identifiable independent of a particular cause.

--
∄ uǝʃƃ

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

gepr

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

But isn't this precisely what Nick and Eric's rendition of Peirce (NEP) is arguing *against*? By analogy, if we take a schematic structure like "if p, then q", it literally does not matter what p or q is bound to, what values they may or may not take on. (In NEP, we're talking more about statistical patterns than logical schema. But that shouldn't matter.)

So, if a lion suddenly spoke logic and could say "if boogle, then pinkle", NEP tells us there is *something* in that expression we can expect to converge over time. And the human, hearing it can be completely ignorant of what boogle and pinkle mean, yet still grok the implication. If that's NOT the case, then the lion isn't actually speaking logic.

Now, if we take a stance that language is embodied-situated and is directly derived from human physiology, evo-devo, fingers/toes, bipedal locomotion, etc. Then a lion speaking English would, literally, imply that the lion was instantly transformed into a human, including all their semantic bindings ... so you'd simply have 2 humans speaking English together.

Another tack against the conclusion Wittgenstein draws lies in the (relative) success of Eddington typewriters like Deep Blue and Watson. Based on the structure by which inferences are made, we can build machines that reason successfully, even though they have no semantic grounding (no concrete experience of the atoms boogle or pinkle, but definitely have concrete experience of *inferring* pinkle from boogle).

On 1/8/19 10:07 AM, Robert Holmes wrote:
> This seems to be an issue of Wittgenstein's Lion <http://existentialcomics.com/comic/245>

--
☣ 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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Frank Wimberly-2

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Nick,

I will find a more approachable presentation of the Hearsay system. It's use of levels is worth knowing about. It's a speech understanding system. The levels are something like phoneme, word, phrase, etc. It has "knowledge sources" which do segmentation (find where one phoneme ends and the next starts), evaluates two hypothesized words to see which fits the context better, revise hypotheses at lower levels based on results at a higher level, and many other tasks. I must have a hardcopy introductory paper around here somewhere.

Frank

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Tue, Jan 8, 2019, 11:04 AM Nick Thompson <[hidden email] wrote:

Once again, I am lost in my own thread.

I will say this: often it seems, with both Marcus, and Glen, and even Owen and Steve, and to a lesser extent Dave West, that their (your) thinking is rooted in models from coding and because I have never been a coder those models are utterly unavailable to me. I have always ... since childhood ...believed that if I worked hard enough at something I could understand it. And so, almost 14 years ago, when I was cast loose in Santa Fe, and Steve and Owen and Carl and Frank took me into that jammed freezing cold office on Agua Fria. They fed me when I was intellectually hungry and comforted me when I was intellectually lonely, and in gratitude, I was determined to understand their mindset. But despite all that I have learned since that time, I have come to admit that there are probably chasms of thought too deep for people to reach across … or, at least, people like me, at this age. I simply lack the models, the commonplace toys of thought, with which you guys so effortlessly play.

I will keep trying, of course, But I thought, perhaps, being the New Year and all, now was a moment to stop and thank FRIAM members for your patience, your indulgence, and your profound commitment to teaching that has kept me alert and engaged and alive these last 14 years.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of ? u???
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2019 8:48 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Excellent! I like everything you've said below. In fact, were we able to clearly talk about heterarchies as explicitly externalizing controls, where hierarchies leave the source(s) of control ambiguous, then we'd map nicely back to Marcus' example of "serializing" a recursive function into a tree walkable by a single control pointer. And we'd also be able to discuss Rosen's conception of separating a closure of agency from (an openness to) the other types of cause (material, formal, and final).

The concept of a heterarchy facilitates the discussion of systemic behaviors like motive as separable into sets of distinct causes and structures in a way the concept of hierarchy does not.

On 1/7/19 6:12 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Thanks for the clarification. I intentionally said Nick was invoking
> *something like "levels of analysis" talk, *because I thought I
> recalled Nick telling me at some point that he didn't like that way of
> thinking, and I'm surprised he hasn't disavowed me more completely on
> it. All metaphors are imperfect, and, acknowledging that, I still like
> that way of talking a lot.
> While you are quite right that tissue isn't literally JUST an
> arrangement of cells, it *is *pretty fair to say tissue is an bunch of
> cells arranged-in-a-structured-fashion and interconnected by various
> inter-cellular structures.... organs are a bunch of tissues
> arranged-in-a-structured-fashion and interconnected by various
> inter-tissue structures, etc.
>
> At any rate... trying to follow your lead, and translate your
> preferred sentence structure to be more like what (I assert) Nick is thinking:
>
> Motives ARE a particular type of pattern in a behavior-by-environment
> matrix.
>
> As a "point of view" based Realism, which Nick has been trying to
> emphasize, it is true that there are many ways the
> behavior-by-environment matrix can be constructed and arranged. Some
> of those ways will reveal the relevant pattern in some instances,
> others will not. The particular pattern is one in which the behavior
> vary across circumstances so as to stay directed towards the
> production of a particular outcome. This sounds very similar to "One
> of the definitions of "heterarchy" is that the components can be
> organized in multiple ways" but if I understood the prior discussion
> of "heterarchy", I take it that concept is about a flexibility in
> control/leadership, whereas no control is implied here (control being
> a different pattern in a different matrix). The cause of the pattern
> is a different matter entirely from the existence of the pattern -
> which is expressly part of the point of Nick's way of approaching it, i.e.,that a "motive" must be identifiable independent of a particular cause.

--
∄ uǝʃƃ

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

Nick Thompson

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

In reply to this post by Robert Holmes-3

Thank you Robert. The cartoon is fun, but the text that accompanies it is ☻MARVELOUS☻. Just a gorgeous piece of writing. I think it’s a tad too strong in places. Obviously the words “Nurse, scalpel” play SOME role in the making of an accurate incision; otherwise, “Nurse, bone saw” might do as well. The words have particular relevance to me, since I spent most of my career trying to understand animal communication. In the that context, W.’s hypothetical becomes bemusing because I am here to tell you that lions do speak, and that we do, to some extent, understand them. Much better, perhaps, than I understand software engineers. (};-)]

In case some might miss the text that went with the cartoon, I add it below:

In Philosophical Investigations Wittgenstein famously said that "if a lion could speak, we could not understand him". This seems contradictory, because of course if he is speaking, it seems like we would understand him. But for Wittgenstein, the words themselves don't so much convey meaning, but express intent that is confined within a particular situation that takes place within our shared culture and experience. So, for example, if a surgeon is performing surgery and said "nurse, scalpel", it isn't simply the two words together that convey the meaning of the surgeon wanting the nurse to hand him a scalpel, it is their shared knowledge of what a surgery is, and what is expected under those circumstances. If, for example, the nurse and surgeon are later at a company dinner, and the surgeon says "nurse, salt", in the same cadence, this will be understood to be a joke, parodying the former circumstance. Nothing about the words themselves really conveys this, but only the shared world that both the nurse and surgeon occupy. This shared world is necessary for any language to function, and learning a language is not only learning the words, but the world in which we are expected to use the worlds.

On the hand, if a lion could suddenly speak English, it wouldn't matter much, because the world that the lion exists in is so divorced from ours, that his expressions, desires, and intents could still never be communicated. The lion doesn't know what a surgery is, or a dinner party, or a joke for that matter. Likewise, we don't know what sort world the lion occupies, so words would be useless. This phenomenon isn't as outlandish as it might sound at first, and even occurs frequently among humans. For example, I had two coworkers who played World of Warcraft constantly, and would talk about it at lunch. They could speak to each other for ten minutes, in English, and I wouldn't be able to decipher a single sentence. It isn't because I didn't understand the meaning of the worlds, but because I had no ability to relate the words to a situation or world that I knew, so the meaning was lost on me. If I can't understand a conversation about a video game I haven't played, even when I've played similar games, how can I be expected to understand a conversation between lions?

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Robert Holmes
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2019 11:08 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Nick,

This seems to be an issue of Wittgenstein's Lion

—R

On Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 11:04 AM Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Once again, I am lost in my own thread.

I will say this: often it seems, with both Marcus, and Glen, and even Owen and Steve, and to a lesser extent Dave West, that their (your) thinking is rooted in models from coding and because I have never been a coder those models are utterly unavailable to me. I have always ... since childhood ...believed that if I worked hard enough at something I could understand it. And so, almost 14 years ago, when I was cast loose in Santa Fe, and Steve and Owen and Carl and Frank took me into that jammed freezing cold office on Agua Fria. They fed me when I was intellectually hungry and comforted me when I was intellectually lonely, and in gratitude, I was determined to understand their mindset. But despite all that I have learned since that time, I have come to admit that there are probably chasms of thought too deep for people to reach across … or, at least, people like me, at this age. I simply lack the models, the commonplace toys of thought, with which you guys so effortlessly play.

I will keep trying, of course, But I thought, perhaps, being the New Year and all, now was a moment to stop and thank FRIAM members for your patience, your indulgence, and your profound commitment to teaching that has kept me alert and engaged and alive these last 14 years.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of ? u???
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2019 8:48 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Excellent! I like everything you've said below. In fact, were we able to clearly talk about heterarchies as explicitly externalizing controls, where hierarchies leave the source(s) of control ambiguous, then we'd map nicely back to Marcus' example of "serializing" a recursive function into a tree walkable by a single control pointer. And we'd also be able to discuss Rosen's conception of separating a closure of agency from (an openness to) the other types of cause (material, formal, and final).

The concept of a heterarchy facilitates the discussion of systemic behaviors like motive as separable into sets of distinct causes and structures in a way the concept of hierarchy does not.

On 1/7/19 6:12 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Thanks for the clarification. I intentionally said Nick was invoking
> *something like "levels of analysis" talk, *because I thought I
> recalled Nick telling me at some point that he didn't like that way of
> thinking, and I'm surprised he hasn't disavowed me more completely on
> it. All metaphors are imperfect, and, acknowledging that, I still like
> that way of talking a lot.
> While you are quite right that tissue isn't literally JUST an
> arrangement of cells, it *is *pretty fair to say tissue is an bunch of
> cells arranged-in-a-structured-fashion and interconnected by various
> inter-cellular structures.... organs are a bunch of tissues
> arranged-in-a-structured-fashion and interconnected by various
> inter-tissue structures, etc.
>
> At any rate... trying to follow your lead, and translate your
> preferred sentence structure to be more like what (I assert) Nick is thinking:
>
> Motives ARE a particular type of pattern in a behavior-by-environment
> matrix.
>
> As a "point of view" based Realism, which Nick has been trying to
> emphasize, it is true that there are many ways the
> behavior-by-environment matrix can be constructed and arranged. Some
> of those ways will reveal the relevant pattern in some instances,
> others will not. The particular pattern is one in which the behavior
> vary across circumstances so as to stay directed towards the
> production of a particular outcome. This sounds very similar to "One
> of the definitions of "heterarchy" is that the components can be
> organized in multiple ways" but if I understood the prior discussion
> of "heterarchy", I take it that concept is about a flexibility in
> control/leadership, whereas no control is implied here (control being
> a different pattern in a different matrix). The cause of the pattern
> is a different matter entirely from the existence of the pattern -
> which is expressly part of the point of Nick's way of approaching it, i.e.,that a "motive" must be identifiable independent of a particular cause.

--
∄ uǝʃƃ

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

Nick Thompson

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

In reply to this post by Frank Wimberly-2

Thanks, Frank.

Perhaps, in the spirit of open communication, I should reveal my dog in the heterarchy fight. See attached.

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2019 12:09 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Nick,

Frank

On Tue, Jan 8, 2019, 11:04 AM Nick Thompson <[hidden email] wrote:

Once again, I am lost in my own thread.

I will say this: often it seems, with both Marcus, and Glen, and even Owen and Steve, and to a lesser extent Dave West, that their (your) thinking is rooted in models from coding and because I have never been a coder those models are utterly unavailable to me. I have always ... since childhood ...believed that if I worked hard enough at something I could understand it. And so, almost 14 years ago, when I was cast loose in Santa Fe, and Steve and Owen and Carl and Frank took me into that jammed freezing cold office on Agua Fria. They fed me when I was intellectually hungry and comforted me when I was intellectually lonely, and in gratitude, I was determined to understand their mindset. But despite all that I have learned since that time, I have come to admit that there are probably chasms of thought too deep for people to reach across … or, at least, people like me, at this age. I simply lack the models, the commonplace toys of thought, with which you guys so effortlessly play.

I will keep trying, of course, But I thought, perhaps, being the New Year and all, now was a moment to stop and thank FRIAM members for your patience, your indulgence, and your profound commitment to teaching that has kept me alert and engaged and alive these last 14 years.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of ? u???
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2019 8:48 AM
To: FriAM <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Excellent! I like everything you've said below. In fact, were we able to clearly talk about heterarchies as explicitly externalizing controls, where hierarchies leave the source(s) of control ambiguous, then we'd map nicely back to Marcus' example of "serializing" a recursive function into a tree walkable by a single control pointer. And we'd also be able to discuss Rosen's conception of separating a closure of agency from (an openness to) the other types of cause (material, formal, and final).

The concept of a heterarchy facilitates the discussion of systemic behaviors like motive as separable into sets of distinct causes and structures in a way the concept of hierarchy does not.

On 1/7/19 6:12 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> Thanks for the clarification. I intentionally said Nick was invoking
> *something like "levels of analysis" talk, *because I thought I
> recalled Nick telling me at some point that he didn't like that way of
> thinking, and I'm surprised he hasn't disavowed me more completely on
> it. All metaphors are imperfect, and, acknowledging that, I still like
> that way of talking a lot.
> While you are quite right that tissue isn't literally JUST an
> arrangement of cells, it *is *pretty fair to say tissue is an bunch of
> cells arranged-in-a-structured-fashion and interconnected by various
> inter-cellular structures.... organs are a bunch of tissues
> arranged-in-a-structured-fashion and interconnected by various
> inter-tissue structures, etc.
>
> At any rate... trying to follow your lead, and translate your
> preferred sentence structure to be more like what (I assert) Nick is thinking:
>
> Motives ARE a particular type of pattern in a behavior-by-environment
> matrix.
>
> As a "point of view" based Realism, which Nick has been trying to
> emphasize, it is true that there are many ways the
> behavior-by-environment matrix can be constructed and arranged. Some
> of those ways will reveal the relevant pattern in some instances,
> others will not. The particular pattern is one in which the behavior
> vary across circumstances so as to stay directed towards the
> production of a particular outcome. This sounds very similar to "One
> of the definitions of "heterarchy" is that the components can be
> organized in multiple ways" but if I understood the prior discussion
> of "heterarchy", I take it that concept is about a flexibility in
> control/leadership, whereas no control is implied here (control being
> a different pattern in a different matrix). The cause of the pattern
> is a different matter entirely from the existence of the pattern -
> which is expressly part of the point of Nick's way of approaching it, i.e.,that a "motive" must be identifiable independent of a particular cause.

--
∄ uǝʃƃ

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

A system for describing bird song units.pdf (953K) Download Attachment

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Nick writes:

“Much better, perhaps, than I understand software engineers.”

I would be surprised if anyone in this conversation identifies as a software engineer.
The complement of that to me seems weird: It’s like declaring a person that can’t swim or drive a car, or would look in a manual to use a hammer?

Marcus

Nick Thompson

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

Marcus,

Well, see that just proves the point. Not only can I not speak your lion-language, I accuse you of being a gazelle. I apologize to all you lions out there. By the way, what DO you call yourselves?

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2019 2:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Nick writes:

“Much better, perhaps, than I understand software engineers.”

Marcus

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

Can you please stop labeling and categorizing things? Your labels aren’t real. I am a person that supports the lifestyle of two dogs.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Nick Thompson <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Tuesday, January 8, 2019 at 2:58 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Marcus,

Well, see that just proves the point. Not only can I not speak your lion-language, I accuse you of being a gazelle. I apologize to all you lions out there. By the way, what DO you call yourselves?

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

Nick writes:

“Much better, perhaps, than I understand software engineers.”

Marcus

Gillian Densmore

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

Well you see....:P

On Tue, Jan 8, 2019 at 3:06 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Can you please stop labeling and categorizing things? Your labels aren’t real. I am a person that supports the lifestyle of two dogs.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Nick Thompson <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Tuesday, January 8, 2019 at 2:58 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Marcus,

Well, see that just proves the point. Not only can I not speak your lion-language, I accuse you of being a gazelle. I apologize to all you lions out there. By the way, what DO you call yourselves?

N

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2019 2:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Nick writes:

“Much better, perhaps, than I understand software engineers.”

I would be surprised if anyone in this conversation identifies as a software engineer.
The complement of that to me seems weird: It’s like declaring a person that can’t swim or drive a car, or would look in a manual to use a hammer?

Marcus

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

gepr

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

FWIW, I have no idea what to call myself. So, I often opt for "simulant", which usually requires an explanation. Then I can yap till the cows come home about systems engineering, programming, yaddayaddayadda and let other people decide what to call me. (It's usually not a flattering label they give me. 8^) But Marcus is right that I would never call myself a software engineer, having been trained by actual engineers.

On 1/8/19 1:57 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Well, see that just proves the point. Not only can I not speak your lion-language, I accuse you of being a gazelle. I apologize to all you lions out there. By the way, what DO you call yourselves?

--
☣ 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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

My rule of thumb is that if they have to take time out to `identify' me, they aren't interested in a conversation anyway. They are just interested in where/if I fit in their pecking order or in their tedious, error-prone mental filing system. Best for both of us if we don't communicate! Many years ago I had complex/heuristic Lisp rules in Emacs to sort incoming e-mails into categories. But I found the e-mails I wanted to read were not from people that had rigid organizational relationships to me or followed single topics.

On 1/8/19, 4:02 PM, "uǝlƃ ☣" <[hidden email]> wrote:

FWIW, I have no idea what to call myself. So, I often opt for "simulant", which usually requires an explanation. Then I can yap till the cows come home about systems engineering, programming, yaddayaddayadda and let other people decide what to call me. (It's usually not a flattering label they give me. 8^) But Marcus is right that I would never call myself a software engineer, having been trained by actual engineers.

On 1/8/19 1:57 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Well, see that just proves the point. Not only can I not speak your lion-language, I accuse you of being a gazelle. I apologize to all you lions out there. By the way, what DO you call yourselves?

--
☣ 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
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

Nick Thompson

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

Ok, Marcus, I am standing my ground as a realist here: ():-[)

You cannot be against categories because you cannot TALK without categories. “person” and “dog” are categories. Yes, the thought they call up in me is inevitably wrong in some respect. I see you with Korgies, but they are actually Irish Wolf Hounds. You cannot bake a sentence without breaking some categories, yet the categories endure. Something about the category is real.

So, if you are not against categorization, per se, and since all categories do violence of one sort or another, you must be against categories that do more violence than they do good. So, when I called you a gazelle, what violence did I do? Would I have done better to call you a Wildebeest? Would I be more or less disappointed in my expectations had I called you a Springbok?

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2019 3:06 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Can you please stop labeling and categorizing things? Your labels aren’t real. I am a person that supports the lifestyle of two dogs.

Marcus,

Well, see that just proves the point. Not only can I not speak your lion-language, I accuse you of being a gazelle. I apologize to all you lions out there. By the way, what DO you call yourselves?

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2019 2:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Nick writes:

“Much better, perhaps, than I understand software engineers.”

Marcus

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

Nick writes:

< Ok, Marcus, I am standing my ground as a realist here: ():-[) >

There you go trying to claim semantics for terms in a public dictionary again. (That’s an example of taking ground, like in my Go example.) Doing so constrains what can even be said. It puts the skeptic in the position of having to deconstruct every single term, and thus be a called terms like smartass when they force the terms to be used in other contexts where the definition doesn’t work. A culture itself is laden with thousands of de-facto definitions that steer meaning back to conventional (e.g. racist and sexist) expectations. To even to begin to question these expectations requires having some power base, or safe space, to work from.

In this case, you assert that some discussants are software engineers and that distinguishes them from your category. A discussant of that (accused / implied) type says he is not a member of that set and that it is not even a credible set. Another discussant says the activity of such a group is a skill and if someone lacks it, they could just as well gain it while having other co-equal skills too. So there is already reason to doubt the categorization you are suggesting.

< You cannot be against categories because you cannot TALK without categories. “person” and “dog” are categories. Yes, the thought they call up in me is inevitably wrong in some respect. I see you with Korgies, but they are actually Irish Wolf Hounds. You cannot bake a sentence without breaking some categories, yet the categories endure. Something about the category is real. >

Are you claiming that the concept of membership in particular biological species is a subjective concept? That I am hijacking the meaning of a person or a dog? Really?

< So, if you are not against categorization, per se, and since all categories do violence of one sort or another, you must be against categories that do more violence than they do good. So, when I called you a gazelle, what violence did I do? Would I have done better to call you a Wildebeest? Would I be more or less disappointed in my expectations had I called you a Springbok? >

For example, it would be better to call the young person in this story a girl. That requires having the cognitive flexibility to recognize that some terms are dynamic or at least a matter of debate.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/opinion/trans-teen-transition.html

Marcus

Prof David West

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

Aww Nick,

Surely you jest: "Something about the category is real."

Real?

Real, as in dualist metaphysics?

Or merely real in the sense that there is a group of humans willing to behave in a manner consistent with a pretend belief that a labeled category is real?

About a decade back there were ten states (Oregon's courts recently struck down this kind of law, so I think Texas is the last remaining state where this is true) that presenting yourself a "software engineer" was a minor felony. This despite the fact that universities in those states issued hundreds if not thousands of diplomas reading software engineering. The activities typically associated with 'software engineering', primary among them, programming, were being practiced for nearly 20 years before the phrase"software engineering" was first uttered. [[LEO I, first business computer, in 1951 - software engineering first coined in 1968.]]

Transgender as a term, let alone a category, is, in the culture most of the FRIAM list exist within, is less than fifty-years old. [The Sioux had a term,"berdache," for men that dressed and behaved as women while providing sexual services to men observing the 7-year post-partum sex with spouse taboo. And there are hundreds of terms in other cultures not afflicted with the need to disambiguate absolutely everything.]

Can you offer an example of a category where membership criteria is not completely arbitrary and does not change over time? A category that is not not constantly 're-defined' in light of new information? (I am thinking here of biological categories like Linneaus's taxonomy of categories replaced with DNA-based categories, being questioned and on the verge of re-definition as we recognize how "muddled" DNA can be.)

Can a "category" ever be more than a "metaphor?"

When it comes to human beings; can categorization ever rise above being an expression of differentiation between thee and me? It seems to me that categorization is, mostly, little more than a disguised expression of xenophobia.

davew

On Wed, Jan 9, 2019, at 8:50 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:

Nick writes:

< Ok, Marcus, I am standing my ground as a realist here: ():-[) >

There you go trying to claim semantics for terms in a public dictionary again. (That’s an example of taking ground, like in my Go example.)   Doing so constrains what can even be said. It puts the skeptic in the position of having to deconstruct every single term, and thus be a called terms like smartass when they force the terms to be used in other contexts where the definition doesn’t work.   A culture itself is laden with thousands of de-facto definitions that steer meaning back to conventional (e.g. racist and sexist) expectations.   To even to begin to question these expectations requires having some power base, or safe space, to work from.

In this case, you assert that some discussants are software engineers and that distinguishes them from your category. A discussant of that (accused / implied) type says he is not a member of that set and that it is not even a credible set. Another discussant says the activity of such a group is a skill and if someone lacks it, they could just as well gain it while having other co-equal skills too.   So there is already reason to doubt the categorization you are suggesting.

< You cannot be against categories because you cannot TALK without categories. “person” and “dog” are categories. Yes, the thought they call up in me is inevitably wrong in some respect. I see you with Korgies, but they are actually Irish Wolf Hounds. You cannot bake a sentence without breaking some categories, yet the categories endure. Something about the category is real. >

Are you claiming that the concept of membership in particular biological species is a subjective concept?   That I am hijacking the meaning of a person or a dog? Really?

< So, if you are not against categorization, per se, and since all categories do violence of one sort or another, you must be against categories that do more violence than they do good. So, when I called you a gazelle, what violence did I do? Would I have done better to call you a Wildebeest? Would I be more or less disappointed in my expectations had I called you a Springbok? >

For example, it would be better to call the young person in this story a girl. That requires having the cognitive flexibility to recognize that some terms are dynamic or at least a matter of debate.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/opinion/trans-teen-transition.html

Marcus

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

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

Nick Thompson

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

Marcus,

Are we playing or fighting? I can’t tell any more. If we’re fighting, let’s stop. Let me know.

I apologize: I was grabbing the word “realist” for a particular meaning; you were quite right. I thought I was doing so humorously, hence the emoji. But one man’s humor is another’s provocation, so let me just say, by way of clarification, that there is a discourse, quite a narrow one, in which “realist” means somebody who believes that only “generals” – i.e., abstractions – are real. This is opposed to “nominalist” who believes that only individuals are real, and that abstractions are mere conveniences of the mind.

You wrote: . “That requires having the cognitive flexibility to recognize that some terms are dynamic or at least a matter of debate”

I actually agree and then some. I think that all terms are dynamic and subject to debate. Yes, even “dog”. My wife got mad at me last night because I put my dogs on the coffee table. There is nothing particularly sacred about biological species.

Can a realist, sensu supra, say the things I just said? Probably not. Am I confused? Clearly. Why would I be writing, if I were not confused?

Writing … taking positions and pushing them until they break … is for me just about the best part of being alive. It’s my “Go”, except I ultimately play the game to lose, not to win. Having to change one’s mind is a terrible thing. I hate it. But worse still is having to wear the same mind, year after year after year.

If you want to go on talking, let me know. If you don’t want to go on talking, but want to wrap the conversation up, wrap it up AND let me know that that is what you are doing, and I will leave it there.

Thanks for your help, in any case.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2019 8:50 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Nick writes:

< Ok, Marcus, I am standing my ground as a realist here: ():-[) >

Are you claiming that the concept of membership in particular biological species is a subjective concept? That I am hijacking the meaning of a person or a dog? Really?

For example, it would be better to call the young person in this story a girl. That requires having the cognitive flexibility to recognize that some terms are dynamic or at least a matter of debate.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/opinion/trans-teen-transition.html

Marcus

Steve Smith

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

I think I want to be a Springbok! I feel as if I've slipped sideways into the alternate reality presented in the movie _The Lobster_ .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yK6i2Ivlphw

Ok, Marcus, I am standing my ground as a realist here: ():-[)

You cannot be against categories because you cannot TALK without categories. “person” and “dog” are categories. Yes, the thought they call up in me is inevitably wrong in some respect. I see you with Korgies, but they are actually Irish Wolf Hounds. You cannot bake a sentence without breaking some categories, yet the categories endure. Something about the category is real.

So, if you are not against categorization, per se, and since all categories do violence of one sort or another, you must be against categories that do more violence than they do good. So, when I called you a gazelle, what violence did I do? Would I have done better to call you a Wildebeest? Would I be more or less disappointed in my expectations had I called you a Springbok?

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2019 3:06 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Can you please stop labeling and categorizing things? Your labels aren’t real. I am a person that supports the lifestyle of two dogs.

From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Nick Thompson <[hidden email]>
Reply-To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Date: Tuesday, January 8, 2019 at 2:58 PM
To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Marcus,

Well, see that just proves the point. Not only can I not speak your lion-language, I accuse you of being a gazelle. I apologize to all you lions out there. By the way, what DO you call yourselves?

N

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2019 2:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Nick writes:

“Much better, perhaps, than I understand software engineers.”

I would be surprised if anyone in this conversation identifies as a software engineer.
The complement of that to me seems weird: It’s like declaring a person that can’t swim or drive a car, or would look in a manual to use a hammer?

Marcus
============================================================
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

Marcus G. Daniels

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Nick writes:

< Writing … taking positions and pushing them until they break … is for me just about the best part of being alive >

Terri Gross contrasts the difference between “What do you do for work?” and “Tell me about yourself.”

The first question is an expectation of conformity, the second is open ended. (And that Glen has the presence of mind to redirect by choosing a generally ambiguous term, simulant and define it for them on the fly.) People that pose questions like the first one, or go on to draw conclusions like that engineers are one way and poets are another, or that software engineers are non-existent (laugh), are being pushy, accusative, and in my view trying to assert a sort of social dominance. Thus they may perceive some pushback from me resembling STFU. Yes, as you say it is different when there is a reasonable expectation of good faith debate where everything is on the table, including dogs. Things get more like fighting and less like playing when there is not good faith, as there is no obligation to declare intentions or to maintain any kind of continuity. I’d argue the distinction between fighting and playing for dogs is not so categorical either, but somewhat quantifiable by the power diverted to the jaw. This is the general case – the world is a political place.

Marcus

Steve Smith

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

Nick writes:

< Ok, Marcus, I am standing my ground as a realist here: ():-[) >

There you go trying to claim semantics for terms in a public dictionary again. (That’s an example of taking ground, like in my Go example.) Doing so constrains what can even be said. It puts the skeptic in the position of having to deconstruct every single term, and thus be a called terms like smartass when they force the terms to be used in other contexts where the definition doesn’t work. A culture itself is laden with thousands of de-facto definitions that steer meaning back to conventional (e.g. racist and sexist) expectations. To even to begin to question these expectations requires having some power base, or safe space, to work from.

I think this is the "genius" of Trump's campaign and tenure... he operates from his own (and often ad-hoc) Lexicon and that reported 39% stable base of his seems happy to just rewrite their own dictionary to match his. That seems to be roughly Kellyanne's and Sarah's only role (and skill?), helping those who want to keep their dictionaries up to date with his shifting use of terms and concepts up to date.

It has been noted that Trump's presidency has been most significant for helping us understand how much of our government operates on norms and a shared vocabulary. He de(re?)constructs those with virtually every tweet. While I find it quite disturbing on many levels, I also find it fascinating. I've never been one to take the media or politicians very seriously, but he has demonstrated quite thoroughly why one not only shouldn't but ultimately *can't*.

In this case, you assert that some discussants are software engineers and that distinguishes them from your category. A discussant of that (accused / implied) type says he is not a member of that set and that it is not even a credible set. Another discussant says the activity of such a group is a skill and if someone lacks it, they could just as well gain it while having other co-equal skills too. So there is already reason to doubt the categorization you are suggesting.

I took Nick's point to be that the Metaphors that those among us who spend a significant amount of time writing (or desiging) computer systems is alien to him, and that despite making an attempt when he first came here to develop the skills (and therefore the culture), he feels he has failed and the lingua franca of computer (types, geeks, ???) is foreign to him. Here on FriAM, I feel we speak a very rough Pidgen (not quite developed enough to be a proper Creole?) admixture of computer-geek, physics, sociology, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, mathematics, hard-science-other-than physics, etc.

I sense frustration in many of us when we try to talk about our various topics of specialty (as amatuers or professionals) with our significantly educated (but in other (sub)disciplines) lay-colleagues. It seems that in the attempt to be more precise or to make evident our own lexicons for a particular subject that we end up tangling our webs in this tower of Complexity Babel (Babble?) we roam, colliding occasionally here and there.

- Sieve

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

Nick Thompson

Re: Motives - Was Abduction

In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels

Thank you, Marcus,

Good wrapup!

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus Daniels
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2019 12:20 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

Nick writes:

< Writing … taking positions and pushing them until they break … is for me just about the best part of being alive >

Terri Gross contrasts the difference between “What do you do for work?” and “Tell me about yourself.”

Marcus

1 ... 3456789