Posted by
Nick Thompson on
Apr 10, 2013; 10:49pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Fwd-New-post-The-Loud-and-Clear-Message-that-the-TED-Controversy-is-Sending-tp7582434p7582636.html
Wow. This is one of those wonderful cases where a body doesn't know what he
means until he has learned all the ways in which he can be mis understood.
When Peter and I wrote that, I don't think either of us had much of a notion
of recursion in the computer sense. We just meant that the explanation
refers back to the question that demands it. We wanted to distinguish that
sort of explanation from explanations which were fully circular .... i.e.,
those that refer ONLY to that which they explain. You know, the kind of
thing you say to a three year old after the 33rd why-question. "Because
that's how many horns unicorns have, Dear. Now go to sleep."
Your mention of modeling reminds me of a kerfuffle I got into with Joshua
Epstein (Well, he got into it with me, anyway; I don't think he paid any
attention to me) concerning modeling and explanation. It's at
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/12/1/9.html Please disregard the abstract, in
this case. There's something screwy about it. I can't figure out from your
comments below whether you will love it or hate it.
Nick
-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:
[hidden email]] On Behalf Of glen e p ropella
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2013 1:04 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] scientific evidence
On 04/10/2013 09:17 AM, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> I have yet to integrate my thinking about "convergence" (preferable to
> "consensus", I think) with the stuff about recursion, which was near-30
> years ago. It was the sort of thing that I though Peter Lipton and I
might
> do when we were old. Not sure I am man enough to do it alone. I think
> Peirce would say ... particularly the later Peirce ... that in
> recursive explanations lurks a form of "right-thinking" that cannot be
> described in the terms of formal logic
I actually distrust consensus and convergence, equally, I think. This is
for the same reason I think the "singularity" concept is suspicious.
It implies a closedness that I don't believe in. The universe seems open
to me, which implies that any process (including explanation) _wanders_
significantly. I will admit constraints, though. Although any process may
wander, it may do so within some hard boundaries ...
like a sandwiched series that forever oscillates without actually
converging.
Anyway, re your paper: The concept of filter explanations may end up being
quite useful to me for the same reason that abduction is useful to me. For
most of my career, I've tried to explain to my fellow simulants that any
particular snapshot of a modeling effort is not very useful.
I.e. any particular _model_ is not very useful (with an anti-authoritarian
prejudice against the much-abused "all models are wrong, some are useful"
aphorism -- I actually think that aphorism has done more damage to the
proper way to use simulation than any other concept).
But the whole modeling and simulation (M&S) effort (trajectory or bundle of
trajectories, given model forking) _is_ useful.
The distinction I would draw is that I don't think of these efforts or the
filter explanations you describe in the paper as recursive so much as
_iterative_. Recursion, to me, implies a kind of "normalized" data, just
like your "distinguishes X's that are Y from X's that are not-Y".
Iteration doesn't usually take advantage of it's more general nature.
But it's still there. You can perform the same process regardless of the
type of the thing to which it's applied. Recursion implies that the result
of applying the process will produce something that can be processed by the
process.
In other words, iteration is "doing it again" and recursion is "doing it to
the result of the last time you did it", making recursion more specific.
Hence, recursion targets a more closed type chain.
This is important to me because my work is multi-formalism, the model
produced in one iteration can be wildly different from the model produced in
prior or subsequent iterations, different in generating structure and
dynamics as well as phenomenal attributes.
Hence I like the concept of filter explanations better than that of
recursive explanations, where the filter can co-evolve with the stuff being
filtered.
> By the way, there is a truly excellent summary of Peirce's thought,
> called On Peirce ... just a hundred pages ... and expensive for all of
that ...
> just a pamphlet, really, .... but worth every penny, by Cornelis
> DeWaal (Wadsworth). My Peirce mentor also approves of it.
Thanks. I've added it to my Powell's wishlist.
--
glen e. p. ropella
http://tempusdictum.com 971-255-2847
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