Posted by
Russ Abbott on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Wimsatt-and-robustness-tp1597523p1597613.html
Here's what Wimsatt says about how to decide what's real (from the
Ontology of Complex Systems paper, page 2).
Before I say what there is in this complex world, I should give my criteria for regarding something as real or trustworthy. ... I want criteria for what is real which are decidedly local--which are the kinds of criteria used by working scientists in deciding whether results are "real" or artifactual, trustworthy or untrustworthy, "objective" or "subjective" (in contexts where the latter is legitimately criticized--which is not everywhere). When this criterion is used, eliminative reductionism is seen as generally unsound, and entities at a variety of levels--as well as the levels themselves--can be recognized for the real objects they are ...
Following Levins (1966), I call this criterion robustness. ... Things are robust if they are accessible (detectable, measureable, derivable, defineable, produceable, or the like) in a variety of independent ways. [emphasis in the original]
It seems to me that most branches of modern science (particle physics, astronomy, neuro-anatomy, ...) rely on tools to see what's real, and those tools do not provide a variety of independent ways to access them. It feels initially intuitively comforting to say that one wants a variety of independent way to perceive something before deciding that it is real. But I don't think that's how science works.
Also, the point is not reproducibility. Wimsett refers to the old distinction between primary and secondary properties to illustrate his point.The secondary properties are accessible through only one sense, e.g., sight (for color), taste (for taste), etc. But they are certainly reproducible. Everyone will agree that salt tastes salty. Yet taste is considered a secondary property.
That's as far as I've gotten in the paper so far. But I thought it was worth raising this issue.
-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
o Check out my blog at
http://russabbott.blogspot.com/
On Sun, Nov 30, 2008 at 8:46 PM, Carl Tollander
<[hidden email]> wrote:
Of late, I've become interested (AKA "mildly obsessed") in/with William Wimsatt's work. (hmmm, U of Chicago, aren't some folks recently in the news from there?) Always liked the notion of processes selecting for accessibility (to maybe see what I'm talking about, study the Hasegawa dyptich at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_(negative_space) for a few minutes/hours). Not to mention the whole Occam's Razor show at the SF Complex continues to reverberate with the local Taiko folk and Wimsatt's paper has some insights there in the first several pages. So anyhow, "interested", so here, have a pod...
>From N-Category Cafe, originally - http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2008/11/mathematical_robustness.html
Thence to the eminently devourable paper: http://www.institutnicod.org/Reduction/7.OntComplSys.pdf (pictures are worth several hundred words).
and then to the interviews at: http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/071004/limited-beings.shtml (Nicely assembled, short, pithy.)
which refer to his book: http://tinyurl.com/66zxgp
which I will order soon from my meager resources if no one stops me.
C.
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at
http://www.friam.org