To be clear, I'm not calling you names for not reading a particular document. I'm simply trying to point out that this particular document [⟁] addresses your ongoing issue with epiphenomena directly and explicitly, albeit with tortuous and torturous formality. Also, your past exploration of Robert Rosen addressed it explicitly, with less formality, and perhaps a less satisfactory result than Wolpert's.
But what comes to the fore is that you refuse to play anyone else's game. Your game is the only game you're willing to play. I can sympathize with not playing Wolpert's game or Jon's game, because they have steep learning curves. Rosen's game is a bit obtuse ... and after hours or years of playing it, you'll be left with little that translates to other games. So, I can see why you might avoid that, too. IDK. Maybe this is simply the inescapable optimum for some people. Rosen is a great example, ostracized and ridiculed as vitalist for so long, causing him to be reactionary and retreat further into his own game, followed only by a few brilliant acolytes and open-minded domain hoppers. And maybe little p pragmatists are simply lazy or cowardly, not willing to tilt windmills long enough to push through a paradigm shift, compromising away the baby, happy enough with the bath water. I have no hill to die on. Maybe that makes me pathetic. [⟁] https://arxiv.org/abs/0708.1362 On 9/16/21 5:55 PM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote: > Please stop telling me that I am a Scurrilous Heathen for not having read > stuff. > Furthermore, I stipulate that you have read more than I have, and will read > more than I will in the future. So, guess you don't have to say that, > either. > I daresay you haven't read von Uexkull on the Umwelt. I don't think you are > a Scurrilous Heathen for not doing so. I hope I can expand your > understanding of your experience by occasionally mentioning it. > I assume that we come as we are to FRIAM, giving fragments of our time, and > receiving fragments of one another's time. > Thank you for giving me just a taste of what I would have gotten from > Wolpert. > I stipulate that all experiences are just that, and that the distinction > between epiphenomena and phenomena is a distinction built up from experiences > that prove out in different ways. > I don't know what world you are talking about if you [think you] are talking > about a world beyond experience. > I don't know what existence you are talking about if you [think you] are > talking about existence apart from experience. > I don't know what fidelity you are talking about if you [think you] are > talking about fidelity apart from experience. > > I think you use epiphenomenon in two quite different senses in your two > paragraphs. > > Another day almost over and the income tax not done. > > If I can get there tomorrow, I will miss you. You are one of the people in > the world who scourges me to think. Hopefully, others can wield the scourge > on your behalf. > > Nick > > Nick Thompson > thompnicks...@gmail.com > https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ > > -----Original Message----- > From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$ > Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2021 3:08 PM > To: friam@redfish.com > Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc > > I doubt I'll make it to vFriAM tomorrow. My schedule hasn't been conducive > lately. So, I'll take the nugget in your text below that I can reply to best. > My claim is *not* that the distinction between phenomena and epiphenomena is > relative to a point of view. That's *your* claim, not mine. My claim is that > epiphenomena do not exist. They are figments of your imagination ... or, more > generously, your calculus for analyzing the world. They are purely *formal*, > syntactic things with no correlate in the world. > > If we can carry multiple frames around with us, we can swap them in and out > and rank them according to which frames produce more or fewer epiphenomena. > Those that produce fewer should be prioritized over those that produce many. > In that, I think, we agree. If we refuse to carry around multiple frames, > then we're (preemptively) stuck with whatever one we've landed on. But none > of this should be taken as a claim that epiphenomena exist, only as an > indicator for how articulated and complete our frame is ... i.e. its fidelity > to what does exist. > > Re: your claim that monism unifies epistemology and ontology -- I've cited > Wolpert's "Limits of Inference" several times and I doubt citing it again > will be helpful. But if we think of all the ways we can think about the > universe as part of the universe, then we can see that there might be a > smaller set of ways to think that have high fidelity than the number of ways > that have low fidelity. Wolpert's argument is that there can be only 1 > maximally faithful way to think. It's a strong argument. It's stronger than > Rosen's argument that there does not exist a "largest model". But, to me, > both are monist; and both lower the number of epiphenomena. > > > > On 9/16/21 11:41 AM, thompnicks...@gmail.com wrote: >> Are we mixing up monadism with monism? I think the epistemic/ontological >> distinction fails under monism. Either everything is ontological or >> everything is epistemic, and in any case there is no in-principle >> distinction to be made between them. >> >> Under peirce's triadic monism all experience is cognition (yes, even body >> experiences) and all cognition is in signs, themselves having always three >> "arguments". (Sorry, =? Variables, >> things-you-have-to-have-there-or-the-expression-is-incomplete. ) So, not >> only is there a point of view in every proposition, the proposition is >> incomplete until the point of view is made explicit, or at least well >> understood between the propositor and the propositee. Asserting that the >> phenomenon/epiphenomonon distinction is relative to a point of view is no >> challenge to that distinction. The whole discussion concerns the shifting >> of frames and the search for a frame that will hold them both. So, I don't >> dispute your relativism; I just insist that it's already built into my line >> of thought. And sometimes I sense that you NEED ME TO BELIEVE that there is >> only one reality and that it is mine. That's not what a Peircean monism >> asserts. Even mine. >> >> Since you assert that you disagree and yet there is no way I can steel-man >> your position that is incompatible with this relativistic monism, I need to >> talk to you. So, tomorrow, around ten am your time, I will extricate myself >> from the Mosquito Infested Bog, and try to reach Vfriam from my car. We'll >> see how that goes. >> >> If we can get beyond a "relativisticker that thou" pissing contest, I would >> like to go on and discuss this difference between body knowledge and brain >> knowledge as if the brain were not, after all, a part of the body. (Sorry, >> that was a bit of straw=manning, for which I need to apologize, but for >> clarity, need not delete). Your actual distinction was between Cognitive >> knowledge and Body knowledge. Many people (perhaps not you) want to treat >> this as an entirely different kind of knowledge, and I think a lot of evil >> can spring from such a radical differentiation. For me, it is once again an >> instance of frame shifting and the search for a frame that will embrace both >> the "cognitive" and the "somatic" frame. I would frame them both as modes >> of experience, say, urgent and reflective. Which of these modes of >> experience "proves out" then becomes an empirical question. Writing this, I >> now see that built into my thinking is the idea that a kind of >> hyper-reflective experience (science?) is the ultimate test of the truth of >> all experience. Dave, I guess will challenge this with all his will. But I >> will counter that it is not that dreams cannot reveal truths, it is that, a >> dream that has revealed a truth, will prove out in the long run. Thus, if >> you dreamt of unicorns in your flower beds last night, you will either find >> unicorn foot prints in the soft turf around your petunias when you wake up >> or recognize that petunias make you horny. Either of those, for me, would >> constitute a truth, one about unicorns, the other about you. >> >> Of course we can always fall back on the Shirley/Kaye distinction, that I >> valorize the search for stability while you valorize embracing chaos. I >> would of course try to find a stable frame that would embrace these both >> (the Apollonian/Dionesian distinction, for instance) which effort, I guess, >> you would have to resist. >> >> Hope to see you tomorrow. >> >> Nick >> Nick Thompson >> thompnicks...@gmail.com >> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/ >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$ >> Sent: Thursday, September 16, 2021 1:40 PM >> To: friam@redfish.com >> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] the cancellation arc >> >> Since I'm bored with this webinar, I figured I'd type up some more troll >> food: >> >> The _epi-_ prefix basically means "near". So a phenomenon is, somehow, >> ontologically localized and an epiphenomenon is epistemically distant. But >> that "secondary" phenomenon need not be ontologically distant, which is >> where the causality problems with epiphenomena enter the discussion. Frank >> raised these causal problems nicely awhile back with the discussion of >> colliders and forks. >> >> Being agnostic, in contrast to a metaphysical commitment to, say, >> reductionism or monism, I defer judgement on the modeling relation, the >> strength of the map between epistemic and ontological structures. This is >> why Nick's attempt to "turn the tables" on me, by suggesting that my >> rejection of epiphenomena is, itself, a perspective, fails. The admission >> that any 1 ontology can submit to analysis by multiple epistemic structures >> allows me to tolerate monists. And the admission that any 1 epistemic >> structure might effectively analyze multiple ontological structures, allows >> me to tolerate pluralists. >> >> A rejection of epiphenomena is a preservation of decoupled epistemology and >> ontology. An acceptance of epiphenomena is a registration, a parsing of the >> world according to a scoped epistemic structure. I go just a tad further and >> argue that such registration is preemptive in that it precludes the analysis >> of that same ontology by alternative epistemic structures. >> >> I'd be OK if someone objected to the preemptivity assertion. Some people are >> open-minded and cognitively endowed enough to swap their frames in and out >> at will. But *I* am neither that open-minded, nor cognitively endowed. I'm >> an agnostic *because* I recognize that limitation in myself. But I've never >> seen someone successfully argue that their, singular, identified epistemic >> frame is The capital T way to register/parse the world. >> -- "Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie." ☤>$ uǝlƃ .-- .- -. - / .- -.-. - .. --- -. ..--.. / -.-. --- -. .--- ..- --. .- - . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn UTC-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
