FWIW, I've found this concept very helpful for such considerations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsey_sentence
On 5/14/20 9:57 AM, Eric Charles wrote: > Whenever a given range of phenomenon start to get scienced, we rapidly find > out that we need to nail down the vocabulary beyond the flexibility usually > allowed in lay conversations about a topic. We can, for example, allow "He's > got momentum" to mean all sorts of things in a lay conversation. We might > talk about broad social phenomenon such as how "Bernie has momentum in the > polls" or "M. Night Shyamalan's career lost momentum after a string of flops, > but he seems to be getting some of that momentum back now", or about general > laziness such as "I'm not going to do the gardening my wife keeps asking > about, because momentum", /and /we also could mean that there is a movement > that will not alter without the application of force such as "He's not going > to stop before he hits that wall, too much momentum." But in a physics > conversation we would take out the casual usages and limit ourselves to the > latter; momentum would be a property of mass at velocity, which stays constant > unless acted upon by a force. Hell, Merrium-Webster even offers "momentum" a > definition of "force or speed of movement", where in that physics > conversation "force" and "speed" are clearly distinguished concepts, that are > definitely /not /momentum. > > Similarly, if we want to talk seriously about psychology, we need to nail > down some vocabulary that will allow us to talk/think rigorously about the > phenomenon in question. We need some terminology by which to refer to the > distinction between the movements of the dead duck (or rock) thrown out the > window and the movements of the live duck thrown out a window. And, as we > already covered, that distinction isn't /just /a matter of falling, because > we want to put Nick's post-defenestration flailing in the same broad category > as the more elegant movements of the live duck. > > Note that, if you aren't interested in /that /distinction that is a different > issue. Lot's of people aren't interested in any particular specialized > science, and that is entirely unrelated to whether the science needs a > specialized vocabulary to operate effectively. And while science frequently > go through phases of emphasizing vocabulary that refers to processes that are > not easy to observe, those can't be the terms that define the domain of the > science. What are the observable phenomenon that lead us to ask questions > about psychology? What are the methods by which those observations are made? > Until we answer those types of questions, it is dramatically premature to > start speculating about what hidden-unobservables might be at play. And, > there is every reason to believe that our interest starts with behavior. "Why > did he do that?" "Why am I acting this way?" When we wonder "Why is he angry > at me?", the start of that question is a witnessed (or reported) action. > > Could other phenomenon end up in our bucket at some point? Sure, just like in > any other science. But you can't even figure out where those other things > start, until you know the limits of where the base concepts take you. Though > I think some followers of James J. Gibson's Ecological Psychology, for > example, take his contributions to the field farther than is warranted, he > absolutely showed that basic principles of perceptual systems can get us > much, much farther than previously thought, including providing solutions to > how people act successfully in situations where most believe that advanced > computational thinking is required. We need to nail down the basic concepts, > and then do the same type of push Gibson did to determine their limits. > > In that context, it seems fair to begin using "behavior" in a more technical > sense. Once that is done, we could actually answer your question about the > tree and the falling seeds, but before that, it would just seem like spinning > our wheels. > > > On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 1:07 PM Jon Zingale <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > Eric, > I have some concern that once we /decide/ the dead duck was not behaving, > that we would avoid the dropped coin. I get that we wouldn't want to > apply the verb /flailing/ to the coin except perhaps in a moment of > poetry. > This is the season to witness cottonwood drifts, though. Better might > be the helicopter like motions of maple seedpods. These adaptations, > which carry the future of the species, are shaped so that they behave > meaningfully when coupled with their environment. Would you hesitate > to call the motions of the cottonwood seedpod, in its environment, > behavior? > Is it too early in this conversation, or even inappropriate to ask whose > behavior it would be? -- ☣ uǝlƃ .-. .- -. -.. --- -- -..-. -.. --- - ... -..-. .- -. -.. -..-. -.. .- ... .... . ... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
