[FRIAM] Why depth/thickness matters

[Nick Thompson]

Glen, 

 

Sorry, I missed this earlier in the day. 

 

See larding below. 

 

N

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen ?
Sent: Thursday, February 09, 2017 12:27 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Why depth/thickness matters

 

 

The way you worded this confuses me.  Did you mean "truth is a correspondence between"?  Or did you mean something like "truth can be corresponded with"?  I typically use the word "truth" to mean the outside, alone, not a map between the outside and inside.  The map between them would be the grounding.  Granted, Hoffman et al's use of the label "truth" to mean a particular strategy was more like the map.

[NST==>Uh…. The dualist account, a thought is a true thought when it matches the state of affairs outside of thought.  <==nst] 

 

But if you did mean to talk specifically about the inside ⇔ outside map, then you're saying that neither Holt nor Peirce would accept Rosen's assumption of his modeling relation (that inference ≈ causality).  That's interesting.  Another thread from Eric's paper follows from his #2 highlight from New Realism: "Relations are real, and hence detectable".  This also evoked Rosen's evocation of Nicolas Rashevsky and relational biology (cf:  <https://ahlouie.com/relational-biology/> https://ahlouie.com/relational-biology/ "Relational biology, on the other hand, keeps the organization and throws away the matter; function dictates structure, whence material aspects are entailed.").

 

It's entirely reasonable to think of edges vs vertices in a graph as perfect duals, to study one is to study the other.  But what Eric seemed to be saying was that relations were elevated to the same status as the organisms, not a flip-flop like we think of as duals.  So studying just the organisms or just the relations would be inadequate.

[NST==>I confess I have never understood what Friammers mean when they start talking about “duals”.  I would say only that on my understanding of the new realism,  everything real consists of matter AND ITS RELATIONS.  Thus, to be conscious, is to stand in relation; to be conscious of another’s consciousness is to stand in relation to that standing in relation.  And so forth.  Eric and I struggled with this in a review <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260060117_A_BEHAVIORIST_ACCOUNT_OF_EMOTIONS_AND_FEELINGS_MAKING_SENSE_OF_JAMES_D_LAIRD'S_FEELINGS_THE_PERCEPTION_OF_SELF>  of a book by James Laird which a group of FRIAMMERS read together a few years back.  Our solution was a kind of hierarchical materialism in which everything is material relations among material relations, ad infinitum.  Tortured.  <==nst] 

 

Not sure where eric has disappeared to.   Hope to hear from him soon  

 

Nick 

 

 

On 02/08/2017 08:26 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:

> Note that neither Holt, nor his mentor’s mentor, Peirce, would endorse the idea that truth is a correspondence between a mental representation and a world outside human experience that it represents, Peirce because human experience is all we got, and Holt because the outside world is all we got.  

 

--

☣ glen

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe  <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

FRIAM-COMIC  <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20170209/22955422/attachment-0002.html>