Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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To be a little more concise, Peirce's position on "self-control" is irrelevant to this point. Where the agency lies is irrelevant. This point is that Peircian belief and Peircian doubt seem well-elaborated by the concept of the looseness and tightness of the feedback loop between reality and the behavior under consideration.
Any behavior (be it belief in the æther or eyeball saccade) can be considered Peircian-doubtful if it's tightly coupled to the environment and Peircian-believed if it is loosely coupled to the environment. And to go back to "What Pragmatism Is", when Peirce says: "if a given prescription for an experiment ever can be and ever is carried out in act, an experience of a given description will result", I think you'll notice that the tightness or looseness of the coupling is a tacit experimental target for pretty much any habit/belief. E.g. my atheist friends delight in pointing out how our theist friends always fail to check their idea of God against reality (strong evidence of Peircian-belief). Or e.g. arguing for/against gun control, one can't help but notice how often an arguer (fails to) cite(s) data. Or e.g. when I run, the first mile or so is painful and horrible (strong evidence of Peircian-doubt), yet the final mile or 2 are wonderfully liberating (strong evidence of Peircian-belief). Or to go back to the dead horse, it should be clear whether a person believes the floor is there when they get up out of bed or not. Did they look first (tight coupling) or not (loose coupling). OK. I feel like I've done as much as I can to make the point clear. I'll stop. Thanks for everyone's patience. ### -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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I've not participated in this discussion of Peirciean Pragmatism for many reasons including a lack of firsthand knowledge of Peirce's work (to even vaguely approach that of Nick or Eric for example. The talk of control loops, habits, belief and coupling with reality vs coupling with beliefs was all very compelling to me, but it was interesting for me to try to remain an observer and not attempt to develop any new beliefs or revise the ones I seem to already seem to hold.. Instead I found myself contrasting this discussion with the more public discussion of Warfianism. From the Wikipedia entry: I also have been re-reading some of the work of Edward T. Hall, in particular his early years working with the Native American version of the CCC as chronicled in his memoiresque "West of the Thirties" which relates his earlier awarenesses of nonverbal communication including cultural differences in the use of space and time which became codified as his "Proxemics". His descriptions of his emerging awareness while a very young man working among desert/depression hardened Anglos as Indian Agents on one hand and roughnecks working on dam and road building on the other, a variety of Navajo and Hopi, and in particular the direct influence of the Traders and most particular that of the Mexican American Lorenzo Hubbell. As if that were not enough, I also had been independently reading up on the Amazonian Piraha' whose language (and therefore world view? seems to center around direct experience for which they have a very specific word - xibipio' which refers to going IN or OUT of experience. The most touching to me is using it for the quality of a candle flame as it flickers. Dan Everett, the Anthropologist who has spent the most time studying these people is often credited with debunking Chomsky's Universal Grammar. I think the Piraha language *does* confront aspects of the Chomskian model as does the Hopi Time Controversy started by Whorf. I do not know if Hall and Whorf ever met during that time, I believe Whorf was a Through all of this I was reminded of the LInguistic notions of realis vs irrealis moods which refer to things being discussed which are or are not known to have happened which is similar but different to xibipio' or even the Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime often translated into western culture as "everywhen". I don't feel capable at the moment of participating in the Peircian discussion honestly but wanted to offer up these contrasting ideas and hope I don't derail or interrupt the former, but rather enrichen the general discourse. - Steve On 3/28/18 10:01 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ wrote:
To be a little more concise, Peirce's position on "self-control" is irrelevant to this point. Where the agency lies is irrelevant. This point is that Peircian belief and Peircian doubt seem well-elaborated by the concept of the looseness and tightness of the feedback loop between reality and the behavior under consideration. Any behavior (be it belief in the æther or eyeball saccade) can be considered Peircian-doubtful if it's tightly coupled to the environment and Peircian-believed if it is loosely coupled to the environment. And to go back to "What Pragmatism Is", when Peirce says: "if a given prescription for an experiment ever can be and ever is carried out in act, an experience of a given description will result", I think you'll notice that the tightness or looseness of the coupling is a tacit experimental target for pretty much any habit/belief. E.g. my atheist friends delight in pointing out how our theist friends always fail to check their idea of God against reality (strong evidence of Peircian-belief). Or e.g. arguing for/against gun control, one can't help but notice how often an arguer (fails to) cite(s) data. Or e.g. when I run, the first mile or so is painful and horrible (strong evidence of Peircian-doubt), yet the final mile or 2 are wonderfully liberating (strong evidence of Peircian-belief). Or to go back to the dead horse, it should be clear whether a person believes the floor is there when they get up out of bed or not. Did they look first (tight coupling) or not (loose coupling). OK. I feel like I've done as much as I can to make the point clear. I'll stop. Thanks for everyone's patience. ### ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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In reply to this post by gepr
Glen... I quite confused as to what you mean by tight and loose control... Either way, Peirce is more interested in the higher-order question of what leads beliefs to be stable. There are many answers to that question (see his "Fixation of Belief"), though the interesting answer, the one he tries to elaborate for the rest of his life, is fixation via the scientific process, in which beliefs stabilize (control behavior more tightly) as their implications attain in practice, and destabilize (control behavior more loosely) as their implications fail to attain in practice. In that context, the scientific context, "Truth" or "Real" are odd terms we use to refer to those things for which all implications will attain in the very, very long run. Let us take the case of belief in a tight relationship between my height off the ground and my likelihood of being injured in a jump. If I firmly believe that, then whether or not I jump is tightly coupled with the height. If I doubt such a relationship exists, then the height I find myself at will be only loosely coupled with my likelihood of jumping... right? Is that not the type of thing you are referring to with "tight" and "loose" control? (... which might, in the very, very long run, turn out to be almost nothing...) On Wed, Mar 28, 2018 at 12:01 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote: To be a little more concise, Peirce's position on "self-control" is irrelevant to this point. Where the agency lies is irrelevant. This point is that Peircian belief and Peircian doubt seem well-elaborated by the concept of the looseness and tightness of the feedback loop between reality and the behavior under consideration. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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Heh, that's completely inverted. You're claiming that fewer interactions between the individual and its environment imply a tighter coupling between them. I'm claiming that more interactions between them imply a tighter coupling.
Maybe think about it this way. Imagine 2 androids (no "beliefs", just behaviors) lying on tables in a lab. Android A reaches down with an arm to touch the ground, then moves its legs and gets off the table. We can count 2 (coarse) interactions with the ground: touching it, then standing on it. Android B just gets off the table without touching it first. We count 1 (coarse) interaction. You claim Android B is more tightly coupled with the ground than Android A. I claim Android A is more tightly coupled with the ground than Android B. ### On 03/28/2018 07:23 PM, Eric Charles wrote: > Glen... I quite confused as to what you mean by tight and loose control... > > Let us take the case of belief in a tight relationship between my height off the ground and my likelihood of being injured in a jump. If I firmly believe that, then whether or not I jump is tightly coupled with the height. If I doubt such a relationship exists, then the height I find myself at will be only loosely coupled with my likelihood of jumping... right? Is that not the type of thing you are referring to with "tight" and "loose" control? > > Either way, Peirce is more interested in the higher-order question of what leads beliefs to be stable. There are many answers to that question (see his "Fixation of Belief"), though the interesting answer, the one he tries to elaborate for the rest of his life, is fixation via the scientific process, in which beliefs stabilize (control behavior more tightly) as their implications attain in practice, and destabilize (control behavior more loosely) as their implications fail to attain in practice. In that context, the scientific context, "Truth" or "Real" are odd terms we use to refer to those things for which all implications will attain in the very, very long run. > > (... which might, in the very, very long run, turn out to be almost nothing...) > > So, there is, on the one hand, something to be said about the "control" that is the belief itself, and something else to be said about the "control" that is the sociological stability of the belief and the basis of that stability. > > In your case of the "dead horse" of putting feet on the floor, the "tight coupling" is what happens when one acts their entire daily life without once checking the belief. Doubt makes one put ones feet down tentatively, makes one walk with caution. The relation of the person to the floor gets looser as doubt increases... doesn't it? The person who firmly believes the floor is there acts towards it unhesitatingly the whole day, thousands of times; his behavior is tightly coupled to a floor being present... as becomes obvious in a dramatic fall if it isn't. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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Number of interactions shouldn't determine whether it is tight or loose, should it? To take behavior out of it for a second: The melting of steel is tightly coupled to temperature, but the
conditions under which the melting occurs are rarely encountered on the
earth's surface.
In contrast, during many points in human history the functional quality of ancient blades was only loosely coupled to the quality of the blacksmith, because it was much more tightly coupled with the quality of the ore. The number of interactions isn't really what's relevant. My behavior could be tightly coupled to a thing rarely encountered, and loosely coupled to things commonly encountered, couldn't it? For example, my standing could be tightly coupled to the rank of the person who just walked in the room, even if there is almost never a person of sufficient rank to generate the response. In contrast, my use of foul language is only loosely coupled to the sensibilities of those around me, though I am around people with various sensibilities quite often. For fresher example: The behavior of an expert dart thrower is tightly coupled to the state of the game and the scores on the target, while the behavior of an amateur dart thrower is not. And that is true even if the expert is resting on laurels and rarely practices, while the amateur is obsessed and practices constantly. For another: A professional poker-tournament player's level of aggression is tightly coupled to the phase of the tournament, the relative size of his chip stack, and his position at the table. That is what it means to say that the professional tournament player "believes" that varying betting based on those factors is important to good play. The casual player does not believe those are all important, as one can see by the loose coupling of his behavior to those factors. Once again, rate of action or number of actions isn't really what is at play. On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 11:17 AM, uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote: Heh, that's completely inverted. You're claiming that fewer interactions between the individual and its environment imply a tighter coupling between them. I'm claiming that more interactions between them imply a tighter coupling. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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Very cool! We disagree completely on the meaning of the word "coupling". 8^) Having grown up (intellectually) building component-based systems, I think of "coupling" in the same sense as "coupler" and interface cables. The thicker the cable, the more coupled. The thinner the cable, the less coupled. The more cables, the more coupled. The same applies to bandwidth, the higher the bandwidth (used), the more coupled.
The word I use for what you seem to mean is "coherence". It's the sense of operating under the same assumptions as others ... or operating in the same "world". It's a kind of logical consistency. E.g. if 2 people "speak the same language", then they're likely to cohere quicker upon their 1st meeting. The more a couple holds hands as they go about their day, the more of a couple they are. 8^) By contrast, identical twins, separated at birth, one living in Australia and the other in Canada are not coupled at all. So if you have 2 androids on tables, if Android A was designed so that it can get off tables 4 feet high and Android B was designed so that it can get off tables 6 feet high, then the extent to which the Android *couples* with its environment determines whether it will be capable of exiting a table for which it was not designed. They are equally capable of exiting the table heights they were designed for. So, a lab with all 4 foot high tables *coheres* with Android A (is logically consistent with), but not Android B. So, Peircian belief means less coupling and more coherence. Peircian doubt means more coupling, less coherence. ### On 03/29/2018 11:49 AM, Eric Charles wrote: > Number of interactions shouldn't determine whether it is tight or loose, should it? > > My behavior could be tightly coupled to a thing rarely encountered, and loosely coupled to things commonly encountered, couldn't it? For example, my standing could be tightly coupled to the rank of the person who just walked in the room, even if there is almost never a person of sufficient rank to generate the response. In contrast, my use of foul language is only loosely coupled to the sensibilities of those around me, though I am around people with various sensibilities quite often. > > To take behavior out of it for a second: The melting of steel is tightly coupled to temperature, but the conditions under which the melting occurs are rarely encountered on the earth's surface. In contrast, during many points in human history the functional quality of ancient blades was only loosely coupled to the quality of the blacksmith, because it was much more tightly coupled with the quality of the ore. The number of interactions isn't really what's relevant. > > To return to the floor... the tightness is in the definitive and unhesitating nature of the interaction. The look of someone who wonders if the floor is there, and the non-committal nature of their feet going down is what is contrasted with the committed action of the person who believes the floor is there. You can, if you want, translate the psychological language of "committed" with the dynamic-systems language of "tightly coupled." > > For fresher example: The behavior of an expert dart thrower is tightly coupled to the state of the game and the scores on the target, while the behavior of an amateur dart thrower is not. And that is true even if the expert is resting on laurels and rarely practices, while the amateur is obsessed and practices constantly. > > For another: A professional poker-tournament player's level of aggression is tightly coupled to the phase of the tournament, the relative size of his chip stack, and his position at the table. That is what it means to say that the professional tournament player "believes" that varying betting based on those factors is important to good play. The casual player does not believe those are all important, as one can see by the loose coupling of his behavior to those factors. Once again, rate of action or number of actions isn't really what is at play. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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That is indeed fascinating! I think, using your terms, that Peirce is only interested in coherence. Strong coherence indicates belief whether the relevant situation arises once a decade or several times a day. The man who doubts the ground exists might look and poke, then decide never to get out of bed. In contrast, the man who fully believes in the ground will interact with it thousands of times a day. That those thousands of interactions occur "without a thought" is testament to the coherence of the system. (Though nothing is completely "coherent" in Peirce's world, because he understands probability and statistics perfectly well. Sometimes people with the strongest ground-coherence still slip and fall, or stick their feet in a whole.) On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 3:13 PM, uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote: Very cool! We disagree completely on the meaning of the word "coupling". 8^) Having grown up (intellectually) building component-based systems, I think of "coupling" in the same sense as "coupler" and interface cables. The thicker the cable, the more coupled. The thinner the cable, the less coupled. The more cables, the more coupled. The same applies to bandwidth, the higher the bandwidth (used), the more coupled. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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I disagree, again. As I tried to point out with both saccade and the inverted pendulum, the person who interacts with the ground thousands of times a day does so in a very tight feedback loop, sensing, acting, sensing, acting, etc. You are free to abstract all the detail and idealistically think something like "walking" demonstrates "full belief". But I claim that's so idealistic as to be useless.
Our robotics experts are approaching bipedal locomotion quite nicely. And it might provide a nice vehicle for arguing about this. We could ask whether successful bipedal robots have mostly general purpose computers (UTMs) or mostly low-level embedded systems logic generating their walking behavior. I'd argue that the extent to which it's the former, indicates more coherence and the extent to which it's the latter indicates coupling. But regardless of how those answers fall out, the robots interaction with the ground is not "full belief". It's a mixed bag of sense, act, sense, act, ... On 03/29/2018 04:34 PM, Eric Charles wrote: > The man who doubts the ground exists might look and poke, then decide never to get out of bed. In contrast, the man who fully believes in the ground will interact with it thousands of times a day. That those thousands of interactions occur "without a thought" is testament to the coherence of the system. > > (Though nothing is completely "coherent" in Peirce's world, because he understands probability and statistics perfectly well. Sometimes people with the strongest ground-coherence still slip and fall, or stick their feet in a whole.) -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
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Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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See Raibert, Marc H. and Francis C. Wimberly.
Tabular Control of Balance in a Dynamic Legged System.
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics 14, 1984.Note the date.---- Frank Wimberly www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 Phone (505) 670-9918 On Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 1:23 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote: I disagree, again. As I tried to point out with both saccade and the inverted pendulum, the person who interacts with the ground thousands of times a day does so in a very tight feedback loop, sensing, acting, sensing, acting, etc. You are free to abstract all the detail and idealistically think something like "walking" demonstrates "full belief". But I claim that's so idealistic as to be useless. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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So, is it fair to say that both the tabular data (including the polynomial approximations to that tabular data) *and* those state variables partitioned out into "those that varied in a predictable, stereo-typed manner" are a kind of "shared assumption" (coherence), whereas the state variables that varied freely reflect the coupling of the system with the environment?
On 03/30/2018 12:29 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote: > Raibert, Marc H. and Francis C. Wimberly. > Tabular Control of Balance in a Dynamic Legged System. > IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics 14, 1984. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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Sounds right. Did you read the paper? I'm not sure I could follow the details at this point. Since then Raibert founded Boston Dynamics. He sold it a couple years to Google. You may have seen the videos of his four-legged beast of burden keeping its footing on ice. ---- Frank Wimberly www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 Phone (505) 670-9918 On Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 5:04 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote: So, is it fair to say that both the tabular data (including the polynomial approximations to that tabular data) *and* those state variables partitioned out into "those that varied in a predictable, stereo-typed manner" are a kind of "shared assumption" (coherence), whereas the state variables that varied freely reflect the coupling of the system with the environment? ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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Yes, well ... I "skimmed" it anyway. I really dig the idea of mixing table look-up with math models. We used to do that all the time. It was an important part of my competitor's success when he beat me in a competition to use ANNs (him) vs. GAs (me) to detect and use ephemerises exhibited in radar scatter of incoming ballistic missiles.
On 03/30/2018 04:08 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote: > Sounds right. Did you read the paper? I'm not sure I could follow the details at this point. Since then Raibert founded Boston Dynamics. He sold it a couple years to Google. You may have seen the videos of his four-legged beast of burden keeping its footing on ice. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: Peirce's "What Pragmatism is."
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https://youtu.be/rVlhMGQgDkY ---- Frank Wimberly www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 Phone (505) 670-9918 On Fri, Mar 30, 2018, 5:34 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> wrote: Yes, well ... I "skimmed" it anyway. I really dig the idea of mixing table look-up with math models. We used to do that all the time. It was an important part of my competitor's success when he beat me in a competition to use ANNs (him) vs. GAs (me) to detect and use ephemerises exhibited in radar scatter of incoming ballistic missiles. ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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