On Feb 22, 2010, at 5:30 PM, glen e. p. ropella wrote: > Thus spake Miles Parker circa 10-02-22 04:15 PM: >> We're all muddling through, that seems to be the point. The question >> of course is, who is willing to admit it. :) I'm extremely skeptical >> of characters like this Loeb dude who pretend not to be. Isn't his >> statement simply yet another attempt of many to resurrect Positivism? >> Given that science as practiced today is pretty much a poorly >> disguised shrine to Positivism, that leaves me wondering, like you I >> think, what Lima-de-Faria is now offering besides a more bedazzling / >> befuddling version of mechanics über alles. > > Well, I don't think LdF is making a justificationist (positivist) point, > so much. I think he would be fine with a falsificationist rhetorical > method, as long as the hypotheses in play can fail tests (i.e. they are > specified concretely enough to be tested). He does explicitly claim > that neo-Darwinist selection is not falsifiable and, hence, not > scientific. So, I don't think he's making a case for positivism. > > But he definitely _seems_ to be making the case for mechanics over all.
Yes, speaking of confusion about words, I was using Positivism not in the epistemological sense, but in the sense of an over-arching approach to reality. So to be more clear I'm thinking of Comte, LaPlace, etc... and the whole idea of social physics..and the extreme consequences of that POV. And with that I can't help but mention that it struck me recently that this is precisely why the ascendancy of physics at SFI in the last how many years has been so off-putting. There is some kind of inherent hubris at work in that kind of approach. > now, rather than autoselection. That makes me think that, perhaps, he's > started to see enough concreteness in selection mechanisms to soften his > stance. It sounds like a really interesting point if I understood it, but can you say a bit more about how selection vs. auto-evolution are bound to different views WRT to determinism? Sorry if I'm being obtuse. > > OK. Implicitly, I agree. But explicitly, I have to argue because the > discussion hinges on how we ground "determine". I really like the word > "canalize" as a replacement, because it seems to separate ontology from > epistemology. It's like "determined, ceteris paribus". [grin] Likewise, Right, which to my view is like saying "determined, ad absurdium" :D. So, as I probably have made boorishly clear, I actually think that we cannot determine in principal, or in practice, or indeed in any lasting useful way. > it would help to replace "scale" with "resolution", because "scale" > implies a precise and attainable truth. A very thought provoking point! It is true that my particular tool / methodology bias causes me to reify scale, to the extent I think of scales as discrete, identifiable slices of nature, even though I don't see any such crispness within scale. I think I'll be contemplating that quite a bit now.. > > Now putting those words in your mouth, I would disagree with the new you > I've constructed and posit that behavior is canalized at some > resolutions and free at others. (I know I've twisted the words all > around... but that's the point of dialogue, right? Perhaps the real you > actually agrees with me.) I don't think the real me would agree, but as I spend a lot of time working on the realization that such a thing doesn't exist there may be some fraction of what I perceive to be me that does. OK, I promise I'll stop now.. > > So, back to autoevolution. LdF is careful to beat around the bush when > providing evidence (he shows lots of pictures of animal parts > side-by-side with pictures of minerals and crystals) and then he goes on Yuck! That's so unfair to the crystals. -Miles ============================================================ 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
