http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Woo-Peddlers-Visionaries-and-Cranks-tp7583094p7583102.html
Glen -
As we attempt to untangle I fear we are tangling yet more?
Maybe taking a fresh run will be better?
Q. Can Science be done without language?
A(smith). Some, almost for sure.
Q. Can Science be done more easily/effectively with language?
A(smith). It seems as if this is the case.
Q. Is Science a "collective thing"
A(smith). Some uses of the term Science are specifically a
collective thing. To wit, the collection of all artifacts of a
specific methodology including the hypotheses (tested or not),
the methods and apparatus for testing them, the resulting data
gathered during the testing, the logic and mathematics used to
analyze the data, and most familiarly, the conclusions drawn
(scientific theories).
Q. Is Science created *by a collective*
A(smith). Individual elements in the collective thing we call
Science can be created by very small collectives. When an
individual generates hypotheses, contrives experiments, executes
them, gathers data and draws conclusions, this is an important
*part* of science and will be included in the collective
artifact. Without independent verification (and nobody seems
to agree on just how much independence and how much verification
is sufficient), the artifacts are not yet fully vetted and I
suppose not "quite" science. In this sense, Science requires a
collective.
Now back to untangling the tangle...
You wax further on empathy:
Now, so far, all these involve animals that look like me, have faces, or
eyeballs, or paws, or whatever. A crow is one step further away. But I
can still do it quite easily. In fact, I can even do it with machines.
I can watch, say, a BEAM robot trying to move around an obstacle and I
can _feel_ its frustration when it fails. I can watch the little
spinning hourglass or whatever on my computer and _feel_ the polling
client process' frustration at the delay, or infinite loop, or whatever
that's making the server process nonresponsive.
This is what I mean when I say "empathy". Now, if you choose to think
about this as a "class of things enough like me", then sure, it's a
predicate (or proto-predicate).
And I think you will agree that anthropomorphism is a form of figurative thinking as much as the use of metaphor. In fact it seems like a special kind of metaphor (where the metaphorical source domain is humanity which is ultimately sourced from one's sense of one's self)? I also understand that it is very instinctual and may be what allows (domesticated?) animals to learn from us (and to teach us) by example.
This is what I mean when I say "empathy". Now, if you choose to think
about this as a "class of things enough like me", then sure, it's a
predicate (or proto-predicate). But in making such a leap (from messy
biological wet stuff to hyper-clean Platonic logic stuff), we have a
problem with "definiteness", dynamism, ambiguity, etc. Predicates are
ideal(ized). What I'm doing when I smash a poor fly and feel bad about
it is NOT a clean, ideal. It's real. I'm _there_... inside the sh!t
with the fly. And I can don and doff lots of predicates faster than you
can say "predicate", as well as wearing more than one at a time. I can
do that because my body is real, but my thoughts are not.
I'm not sure that I can say that my "thoughts are not real". I
can agree for the sake of arguement that they are *different* than
my immediate sensations, but then my immediate sensations (go
experience one of many perceptual illusions) are not *real*
either. We fit our *raw* perceptions (whatever that means) onto
some series of layers of models. I would contend that at some
point those models are entirely linguistic/abstract/symbolic (for
humans) and that wherever that divide lies might be an important
one.
I believe it's true, that most (if not all) people do something akin to
building and running simulations in their head. However, where we
_might_ disagree is that I believe the components of those simulations
are NOT software, NOT thoughts, NOT ideas, not logic. They are wet,
messy, globs of neurons, astrocytes, epithelials cells, free radicals,
well-bound molecules, etc. Those are the building blocks of the
simulations we build and execute in our heads. What you call "logic" is
actually wet-n-messy biology ... or dirty-nasty physics, depending on
your preference. Pretending you can extract an idealized logic from
it's wet-n-messy machine is pure pretense, to me ... like denying your
origins or some form of self-loathing.
If I calculate something using a slipstick (aka slide rule) you
could say that I am merely (surely?) manipulating physical objects
(the slide in the rule) which is made up of atoms (wood,
celluloid, aluminum, etc.). But I would claim that what I am
doing (whilst manipulating said objects) is manipulating
abstractions... in particular, I am using the (relatively
accurate) physical conservation of length in these
objects/materials to "add" and then using the *abstraction* of
exponential notations and arithmetic to then *multiply* and/or to
simply *look up* other functions (e.g. trigonometric) using the
device of marks on a movable pair of objects with an (also)
moveable reticule.
When I do "simple" arithmetic in my head, I use a combination of
conventional symbols (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9) and rules (decimal
positional numbers) and more rules (addition, multiplication,
division, etc) to achieve these answers. I happen *also* to have
a strong intuition about much arithmetic/mathematics which I not
as obviously symbolic. But I would claim this intuitive
calculation is more like a sloppy version of the slide rule
described above. I may do long division in my head using some
short-cuts, but it is entirely symbolic, and I may check my answer
using various intuitive tricks (including visualizing the number
as a rectangular area and the divisor and result as the length of
the sides). I might take a square root of a large number by
gathering together that number (counting) of physical objects and
arraying them in successively larger squares until I run out, then
count one edge of the (completed square) subset and then do the
same with the remainder, etc. until I get tired... Or I can use
any one of several methods which are *more* abstract and less
geometric/physical. A square root seems to have meaning that
transcends it's humble origins in geometry and while it may be
*possible* to calculate square roots (or do division) using
geometric (physical?) methods, it is not the "best" or only way.
I think my own long-division in my head (or on paper) is likely
more similar (because it is a symbolic manipulation) to the
bit-shifting and 2's complementing and XORing of registers in a
computer than to the physical arrangements of objects in a
geometric array?
When I do mechanical/constructiony things, I (myself) tend toward
the intuitive "cut and try" with various tools and techniques to
avoid or shortcut the use of precise symbology and
computation/logic. Where someone else might whip out a tape
measure and read off a number, write it down, then go cut to that
same length, I am more likely to grab a bit of string, a
straight(ish) stick or similar, lay it next to the hole to be
filled, mark it with my fingernail (or just hold it) then move to
the piece to be cut, line it up, and mark *it* with a fingernail
(or recognize a mark or defect in the target bit of wood to be
cut) and then cut... biasing slightly toward "long or short"
depending on whether I want a tight fit or if I can't afford to
make a mistake (last piece of that stock). I usually get really
close... close enough to force-fit into place or to slip-fit it in
without more gap than is suitable for the use.
But that doesn't mean I *never* use complex computations based on
abstractions. When I designed (and layed out and built) my
sunroom, I built it facing south with a faceted (at the scale of
the windows I was putting in) elliptical cross-section. I might
have achieved the same thing *without* a conceptual abstraction we
agree to call an ellipse and for this purpose I think it was not
important that such ellipses can be idealized by a plane cutting a
cone, but it was important (convenient) for layout/construction
that the definition of an ellipse was that it be the figure
inscribed by the conserved distance from two loci. I had a pair
of nails driven into my foundation and the same piece of string
throughout the construction.
It is from that context that I talk of science being a real,
dirty-nasty, objectively true thing, independent of, in spite of, the
fantasies we engage in with our thoughts. And therein lies it's success
over even more fantastically imaginary things like religion or Platonic
mathematics. The reason science works and the rest fails is _because_
it's dirtier, nastier, wetter, messier, than whatever we might think ...
which is why the methods section is the important part of a journal
article. ;-)
Ok... I think I agree that Science (as opposed to mathematics)
requires an embedding in the (real, messy, wet, etc.) world.
What I'm not clear on is whether the abstractions we have
developed (linguistic in general and mathematical in particular)
are not neccesary (or at least very useful?).
When first studying the History and Philosophy of mathematics I
was told that the Sumerians had huge stores of clay tablets with
all problems of algebra solved up through quadratics but done by
elaborate (and ultimately redundant if you ignore the abstraction
of a variable with a unit) story problems. This would seem to be
an example of your "pointing" (using langauge to describe the
identity of things) and empathy (to invoke in the imagination the
experience of cutting a block of stone or pacing off a plot of
land). If a person (or culture) had the stamina/capacity to store
all such examples and index them effectively, I suppose the
abstractions of algebra would be irrelevant or unneccesary and
maybe even considered a "cheap trick" by those who had the
capacity to hold these problems in their heads?
It seems also that the step from the "method of infinitesmals" to
modern Calculus might have a similar leap in it? The former being
amenable to "point and empathize" and the latter maybe not so
much?
hmmm...
- Steve
PostScript:
when I see one of those TV commercials trying to get me to
donate to feed starving children in Africa, I posit that particular
neurological (and other physiological) processes are activated in my
body. The same physical processes are activated when I see an ASPCA
commercial. And when I watch some schmuck get hit in the testicles on
"Jackass: the movie" or whatever.
THIS is why I shot my TV! I also stay away from Youtube except
for instructional videos for tearing down, repairing (and most
importantly) re-assembling my complex devices (pieces of my
Digital as well as my Analog ecology (aka Swamp)).
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College