I ask because I've come to rely on a distinction between human-in-the-loop and automatic workflows as
"informal" and "formal", respectively. This, I think, follows the conception of
"effective computation" (cf
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/church-turing/#MakiInfoConcEffeMethPrec). I don't like my colleagues' use
of [un]supervised, prolly for no good reason. Given that, I would reduce your 7 types to just the 2: (1) and
(3). I like Eric's idea that the term is mostly used as a placeholder, but it doesn't feel like a definition.
It sounds more schematic - what can be said about the scheme *without* binding the unbound terms at all, or
binding them with some variation - or maybe like a Ramsey sentence, pushing metaphysics away and allowing us
to focus on observational bindings for the term.
I'm confident such a reduction is peculiar to me (e.g. not really believing in
intersubjectivity, experiential, linguistic, and especially participatory would all be
mediated by formality). But then operational would be constrained (or liberated?) by
formality. To be clear, something like the engine in your car is "formal" in
this sense because you don't need to understand how it works in order to use it to get to
the grocery store.
On 6/27/25 1:58 PM, steve smith wrote:
Do fields like economics, sociology, and psychology fit into (3)?
I'd say fundamentally 2, albeit with groundings in 3. The subjects of these fields
fundamentally are "things we agree on" even if/though there is statistical
measures and math involved in working with those things? Some could claim that all
modeling is fundamentally 2... models only make as much sense as we agree amongst
ourselves to agree to them.
Most of us engage with them as if 1). We treat these fields as pragmatic
realities (check your 401k balance lately, use Myers-Briggs results to explain
why someone is easy/difficult for you, respond to someone from a different
(sub)culture based on broadly agreed upon (but likely wrong) stereotypes. Most
of us are very pragmatic in our apprehension of reality until we try to define
it or drill down into it or hold one another accounblable to it?
On 6/27/25 9:05 AM, steve smith wrote:
1) Operational Pragmatic Reality: /
/
/That which affords coherent behavior—the reliable background against which
action can occur. As from ecological psychology (/Gibson/’s affordances),
predictive processing (/Friston/), and some aspects of (our beloved)
/Peircean/pragmatism?/
2) Intersubjective Reality:
/That which is constructed, maintained, and enacted through language and
shared narratives. As from /Luckman, Lacan, Foucault/?/
3) Formal (Scientific) Reality:
/That which can be modeled with precision, prediction, and repeatability.
As from Mathematics, physics, systems theory?/
4) Experiential Reality: /
/
The immediately given, lived experience—the “suchness” before concept.**/As
from /Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Varela? Whence /Qualia/.
5) Placeholder Reality:
/The term “reality” as a placeholder or dummy variable—used rhetorically to
defer deeper ontological commitments. As from /all of us/all the time?/
6) Participatory Reality:
/Reality as not wholly determinate /until observed or enacted/—that is, it
co-arises with participation./
7) Linguistic Manifold Reality:
/LLMs inhabit and approximate intersubjective reality. Each language model
represents a “manifold” within a semantic plenum. “Reality” is the
high-dimensional attractor surface that forms when enough participants
(biological or artificial) converge on something shareable, predictive, and
compressible./
Enactivism / Autopoiesis / Dependent Co-Arising (EAC) is not a single category
in this typology—it is a *meta-theory of reality-generation*, operating across:
*
*Operational* → it explains the /conditions for affordances/
*
*Intersubjective* → it explains /how we co-construct the shared/
*
*Experiential* → it explains /how we inhabit the lived/
*
*Participatory* → it explains /why observation creates reality/
And it gently critiques:
*
*Formal* → by showing its limits
*
*Placeholder* → by showing its necessity
*
*LLM-based* → by asking what is missing for full participation
--
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