Hmmmm! I wonder how Glenn would react to our requesting him to play this game.
I hate it because it depends so powerfully on the meanings of the words in the
question but I love it because it gives me a number. And of course because of
the company it puts me in. Who couldn’t enjoy a game that puts me in the same
space as Ludvig Wittgenstein
Glen, will you play? Just for kicks!
{
"currentVector": {
"deterministic": 0.5,
"reductionism": 0.5,
"empiricism": 1,
"materialism": 1,
"teleology": 0.01
},
"closestPhilosophers": [
{
"name": "Daniel Dennett",
"cosineDistance": "0.04"
},
{
"name": "Werner Heisenberg",
"cosineDistance": "0.05"
},
{
"name": "David Hume",
"cosineDistance": "0.05"
},
{
"name": "Niels Bohr",
"cosineDistance": "0.05"
},
{
"name": "Ludwig Wittgenstein",
"cosineDistance": "0.05"
}
]
}
Sent from my Dumb Phone
On Aug 7, 2024, at 2:12 PM, Stephen Guerin <stephen.gue...@simtable.com> wrote:
Nick,
How do we think about "Telos"? I can't help myself - "Dan wheel out our one-trick
TensorPony" :-)
Nick, this time you need to give us your tensor wrt to the philosophers and
scientists that have discussed telos according to Dan so I can get a sense of
where you are coming from. Copy and paste your result here. And then you can
suggest other dimensions or questions to ask to modify the space.
https://guerin.acequia.io/telosTensor.html
<https://guerin.acequia.io/telosTensor.html>
<image.png>
Dan picked these folks to establish the spanning set of the space.
Philosophers and Scientists on Telos
*Aristotle:* Introduced the concept of telos, arguing that everything in nature
has a purpose or goal it strives to achieve, which is fundamental to
understanding natural processes.
*David Bohm:* Proposed the theory of the implicate order, suggesting a deeper,
orderly reality underlying apparent randomness, resonating with teleological
thinking.
*Ludwig Boltzmann:* Focused on statistical mechanics and the behavior of gases,
emphasizing probabilistic interactions without invoking purpose.
*Jean-Paul Sartre:* Proposed the existentialist view that life has no inherent
meaning, and that individuals must create their own purpose, avoiding
teleological explanations.
*Michel Foucault:* Analyzed power, knowledge, and discourse, focusing on
societal structures without invoking teleological explanations, instead
emphasizing historical and social processes.
*Richard Feynman:* Known for a pragmatic and non-teleological approach to
physics, emphasizing mathematical descriptions of physical phenomena without
resorting to purpose or goal-directed explanations.
*Immanuel Kant:* Distinguished between appearances and the noumenal world,
arguing that teleological judgments are heuristic and do not reflect the actual
nature of reality.
*Max Planck:* Believed in a fundamental consciousness underlying reality,
stating that all matter originates and exists by virtue of a force governed by
a conscious and intelligent mind, suggesting a teleological dimension.
*Erwin Schrödinger:* Explored the fundamental order and purpose in living
systems in his work, suggesting that physical laws govern biological processes
with an underlying direction.
*Daniel Dennett:* Rejected teleological explanations in favor of evolutionary
and mechanistic accounts of consciousness and cognition.
*Friedrich Nietzsche:* Rejected teleological explanations, emphasizing that
life and the universe do not have inherent purposes or goals, and critiqued
teleological views as human projections.
*Roger Penrose:* Proposed ideas about the cyclical nature of the universe and
the role of consciousness in quantum processes, hinting at a purposeful
direction in both physical and mental realms.
*Thomas Aquinas:* Integrated Aristotle's ideas into Christian theology,
emphasizing that everything in nature has a purpose designed by God.
*Albert Einstein:* Believed in an underlying order and simplicity in the
universe, often speaking of the universe as comprehensible and governed by
rational principles, which can imply a teleological perspective.
*Ilya Prigogine:* His work on dissipative structures suggests that systems
self-organize into ordered states, implying a form of goal-directed evolution
toward complexity.
*John Archibald Wheeler:* Suggested that observers play a role in bringing the
universe into existence, hinting at a teleological aspect where the universe's
structure is influenced by the presence of observers.
*Karl Marx:* Rejected teleological views of history, emphasizing material
conditions and class struggles as the drivers of historical change.
*Stephen Guerin:* Explored the idea of autocatalytic processes in the
universe's self-organization, indicating a teleological aspect to the evolution
of complexity and structure.
*Hans Jonas:* Argued that living organisms exhibit a fundamental purposiveness
and that life itself has an inherent teleological nature.
*Henri Poincaré:* Analyzed celestial mechanics and dynamical systems, focusing
on deterministic chaos and system behavior without teleological implications.
*James Clerk Maxwell:* Developed equations describing electromagnetic fields in
a purely mathematical way, without implying any teleological purpose.
*Jacques Derrida:* Emphasized the instability of meaning and critiqued
metaphysical systems that impose teleological structures on language and
thought.
*John Archibald Wheeler:* Suggested that observers play a role in bringing the
universe into existence, hinting at a teleological aspect where the universe's
structure is influenced by the presence of observers.
*Ludwig Wittgenstein:* Focused on the use of language and meaning derived from
its context, avoiding metaphysical explanations that imply purpose or
goal-directedness.
*Niels Bohr:* Emphasized probabilistic outcomes in quantum mechanics, grounded
in empirical observations and avoiding teleological interpretations.
*Paul Dirac:* Developed quantum mechanics and quantum field theory with a focus
on mathematical formalisms, describing particle behavior without implying
purpose.
*Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:* Proposed an evolutionary teleology where the
universe and life progress toward greater complexity and consciousness,
culminating in the Omega Point.
*Richard Feynman:* Developed the path integral formulation, suggesting that the
universe selects the path that minimizes action, which can be seen as a
mathematical form of goal-directed behavior.
*Stuart Kauffman:* Proposed that the universe and life self-organize through
autocatalytic processes, indicating a teleological aspect to the development of
complexity and order.
*Thomas Aquinas:* Integrated Aristotle's ideas into Christian theology,
emphasizing that everything in nature has a purpose designed by God.
*Werner Heisenberg:* Described fundamental limits on measurement and
predictability through the uncertainty principle, avoiding any notion of
purpose in physical systems.
Here's my result copied using the "copy my Elos Tensor" button on the page
showing the closest philosopher/scientists to me, according to Dan.
<image.png>
{
"currentVector": {
"deterministic": 0.1,
"reductionism": 0.1,
"empiricism": 0.1,
"materialism": 0.1,
"teleology": 1
},
"closestPhilosophers": [
{
"name": "Stephen Guerin",
"cosineDistance": "0.00"
},
{
"name": "Aristotle",
"cosineDistance": "0.23"
},
{
"name": "Plato",
"cosineDistance": "0.25"
},
{
"name": "David Bohm",
"cosineDistance": "0.30"
},
{
"name": "Ilya Prigogine",
"cosineDistance": "0.32"
}
]
}
On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 3:09 PM Nicholas Thompson <thompnicks...@gmail.com
<mailto:thompnicks...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Dear Phellow Phriammers,
Ever since the days of Hywel White (GRHS) I have puzzled over the fact that
telic language so often appears in physics discussions. I used to tease Hywel
that Psychology must be the Mother of Physics, because he had to use
psychological terms to describe the motion of particles. More recently, I have
the same sort of discussions with Stephen Guerin who wants to use telic
language concerning the path of photons and least action. (I hope I have this
right, Stephen). You all have been tempted to think I am just trolling, but I
don't think I am. I think there may be places where such descriptions are
appropriate. I do think, for instance, that the relation between the first
derivative of a function and any point in that function is analogous to the
relation between the motivation of a behavior and the behavior itself.
i am back to weather again, after a vacation from it for my obsession with
unsuccessful vegetable gardening. Here is a quote from an Atmospheric
Dynamics text which is laying out the Coriolis Force.
*What happens if we consider the hockey puck moving equator-ward relative
to the rotation of the Earth. In the absence of applied forces it /must/
conserve angular momentum. Upon being pulled equator-ward in the northern
hemisphere the radius of rotation of the puck begins to increase.Consequently,
an anti-rotational relative motion/develops/ /in order to/ conserve angular
momentum, /[Italics by NST/] *
In the view of folks on this list, is this an appropriate use of telic
language, and why or why not? Stephen has a defensible argument in favor of
it's appropriateness, the only such argument I have ever heard. ( I don[t buy
the premises, but the argument is sound) I am wondering about the rest of you.
