[FRIAM] Abduction

Thu Dec 27 20:25:59 EST 2018

Dear Prof,

There was a philosophy professor at the University of Pittsburgh named
Adolph Grunbaum whose career was partly defined by his writings on "is
psychoanalysis science?"

His papers and books generally concluded that it isn't.  Pitt also had one
of the only university-affiliated psychoanalytic institutes in the US.

Definition: "psychoanalysis" includes the theories and treatment modalities
introduced by Freud as well as innovations like neo-Freudian psychology,
object relations theory, and other more modern treatments and theories.

One of the senior psychoanalysts, who was a friend of Grunbaum, asked why
it isn't as valid to ask if science is psychoanalytic.  This is hard to
explain. What really matters to a person are his own drives and feelings.
Grunbaum would become angry if anyone asked him
if his father was a psychoanalyst because he thought they would argue that
his interest in the topic was an expression of a childish rivalry with his
father.   His brother was a psychoanalyst even though his father wasn't.

The point is that our deepest wishes and fears are personal and rooted in
our earliest experiences.  In Grunbaum's case his scientific hypothesis
might be a form of "my father is smarter than yours".  I am not saying that
is the case.

The question of whether science is *the* royal road to the truth depends on
which truth you mean.

Is that related to your objection to the third privilege?

Frank

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

On Thu, Dec 27, 2018, 5:26 PM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm wrote:

> "Trump supporters are not individualists, they are just people trying to
> recover privilege they *didn’t earn *and now see slipping away"
>
> Three brief comments:
>
>   1- Refusal to "know your enemy" and insistence on erroneous straw man
> characterizations of that enemy is exactly what will allow Trump to be
> re-elected.
>
>   2- Individualism is about responsibility - not ego, not 'privilege' -
> and includes a deeply felt responsibility to aid others who's circumstances
> mandate such aid. Questioning the means of providing that aid is not an
> argument against providing it. (Same thing is true of climate change - for
> the majority, not the straw man characterization - it is not a question of
> science, but of means for rectification.)
>
>   3- The most blatant assertion of privilege that I see on this list is
> the privilege given to "Science." While I am certain that individuals among
> you have earned your position to speak about, and assert the privilege of,
> "Science," the subject itself has not demonstrated that it has "earned" its
> insistence on denying all other avenues to knowledge and understanding as
> 'erroneous', emotional (emphasis on the sexism here), irrational, or simply
> wrong. (The assertion of privilege for "liberal" viewpoints comes a very
> close second.)
>
> davew
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 27, 2018, at 5:21 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
>
> Lee Rodulph wrote:
>
>
>
> *As I have learned from Nick, Peirce is also committed to the defense of
> "the dignity of fallible knowledge" (at least, I *think* I've learned that
> from Nick; but I might be wrong...).*
>
>
>
> Well, it’s possible your learned the sentiment from me, but your way of
> expressing it, is, like Glen’s “level prejudice”, a patentable thought, and
> I would like to be the first to license it.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> 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
> lrudolph at meganet.net
> Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2018 9:24 AM
> To: 'The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group' <
> friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction
>
>
>
> Glen wrote, in relevant part, "Like mathematicians, maybe we have to
> ultimately commit to the ontological status of our parsing methods?"  I
> wish to question the implicit assumption that mathematicians _do_ (or even
> _ought to_) "ultimately commit to the ontological status" of _anything_ in
> particular.
>
>
>
> I wrote (some time ago, and not here) something I will still stand by.  It
> appears at the beginning of a me-authored chapter in a me-edited book,
> "Qualitative Mathematics for the Social Sciences: Mathematical models for
> research on cultural dynamics"; the "our" and "we" in the first sentence
> refer to me and my coauthor in an introductory chapter, not to me-and-a-
> mouse-in-my-pocket.  (Note that I am a mathematician, _not_ a social
> scientist, and only very occasionally a mathematical modeler of any sort.)
> I have edited out some footnotes, etc., but in return have expanded some of
> the in-line references {inside curly braces}.
>
>
>
> ===begin===
>
>
>
> In our Introduction (p. 17) we quoted "three statements, by mathematicians
> {Ralph Abraham; three guys named Bohle-Carbonell, Booß, Jensen, who I'd not
> heard of before working on the book; and Phil Davis} on mathematical
> modeling". Here is a fourth.
>
>
>
> (D) Mathematics has its own structures; the world (as we perceive and
> cognize it) is, or appears to be, structured; mathematical modeling is a
> reciprocal process in which we _construct/discover/bring into awareness_
> correspondences between mathematical structures and structures `in the
> world´, as we _take actions that get meaning from, and give meaning to,_
> those structures and correspondences.
>
>
>
> Later (p. 24 ff.) we briefly viewed modeling from the standpoint of
> "evolutionary epistemology" in the style of Konrad Lorenz (1941) {Kant´s
> doctrine of the a priori in the light of contemporary biology}. In this
> chapter, I view modeling from the standpoint informally staked out by (D),
> which I propose to call "evolutionary ontology." My discussion is sketchy
> (and not very highly structured), but may help make sense of this volume
> and perhaps even mathematical modeling in general.
>
>
>
> Behind (D) is my conviction that there is no need to adopt any particular
> ontological
>
> attitude(s) towards "structures", in the world at large and/or in
> mathematics, in order to proceed with the project of modeling the former by
> the latter and drawing inspiration for the latter from the former. It is, I
> claim, possible for someone simultaneously to adhere to a rigorously
> `realist´ view of mathematics (say, naïve and unconsidered Platonism) and
> to take the world to be entirely insubstantial and illusory (say, by
> adopting a crass reduction of the Buddhist doctrine of Maya), _and still
> practice mathematical modeling in good faith_ if not with guaranteed
> success. Other (likely or unlikely) combinations of attitudes are (I claim)
> just as possible, and equally compatible with the practice of modeling.
>
>
>
> I have the impression that many practitioners, if polled (which I have not
> done), would declare themselves to be both mathematical `formalists´ and
> physical `realists´. I also have the impression that a large, overlapping
> group of practitioners, observed in action (which I have done, in a small
> and unsystematic way), can reasonably be described to _behave_ like
> thoroughgoing ontological agnostics.  Mathematical modeling _as human
> behavior_ is based, I am claiming, on acts of pattern-matching (or
> Gestalt-making)-which is to say,in other language, on
> creation/recognition/awareness of `higher order structures´ relating some
> `lower order structures´-that one performs (or that occur to one)
> independently of one´s ontological stances. That is not all there is to it,
> as behavior; but that is its basis.
>
>
>
> ===end===
>
>
>
> To take Glen's question in (perhaps) a different direction, I note that
> Imre Lakatos also used the word "ultimate" about mathematicians, as
> follows: "But why on earth have `ultimate´ tests, `final authority´? Why
> foundations, if they are admittedly subjective?  Why not honestly admit
> mathematical fallibility, and try to defend the dignity of fallible
> knowledge from cynical scepticism, rather than delude ourselves that we can
> invisibly mend the latest tear in the fabric of our "ultimate" intuitions?"
> As I have learned from Nick, Peirce is also committed to the defense of
> "the dignity of fallible knowledge" (at least, I *think* I've learned that
> from Nick; but I might be wrong...).
>
>
>
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> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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