[FRIAM] Abduction

Mon Dec 31 18:05:34 EST 2018

Hi, all, 

Channeling Peirce is hard work, and tho Eric C. does it extremely well, I think there is one slip of the pen below.  Please see larding: 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

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

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Eric Charles
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2018 3:29 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Abduction

Glen said " In all my posts, I've tried to push for "True as far as it goes" ... or "true for now, maybe not true later", "true over here but not over there", etc. "

This leads me to believe that we have lost track of Peirce being a well established scientist, making contributions to several fields. "True as far as it goes" is a crappy place for a scientist's work to end, but "True as far as it goes, and let me tell you how far it goes" is a an ideal place for the the scientist to end up! 

That is: The progression of a series of scientific claims is often movement towards claims of exactly the type Glen mentions. Chemical X mixed with chemical Y makes chemical Z. No, that's not quite right. Chemical X mixed with three parts chemical Y makes one part chemical Z. No, that isn't quite right either, the stated reaction takes place only when we use a solution that has in it a certain amount of oxygen (oxy-gen meaning the acid-generating chemical). No, actually, oxygen isn't crucial after all, that Lavoisier has acid stuff all wrong; any solvent within a certain range of PH will do. Also, the reaction is dependent upon the addition of heat. Well, pressure works to, so let's create an equation to specify the necessary range of heat-pressure combinations. Etc. Etc. Etc. 

And by just such a series of discoveries (Peirce believes), the scientific method progresses us towards beliefs that are ever-more stable, and... least some of the time... towards a belief that will hold up across all potential tests. When a belief is found wanting, we call it "not true". As such, it follows, that "true" is what we call beliefs that are not be found wanting. In practice, the labeling of something as "true" is more of a bald assertion, or expression of hope, or bold conjecture, or something like that --- as in practice it cannot be an expression of having completely established the truth of the belief --- but however you want to phrase that: To believe that something is true (with a high degree of clarity about the belief) is to believe that it will ultimately not be found wanting. 

[NST==>We must constantly bear in mind Peirce believes that most things are random, i.e., there is no truth about them, nothing upon which opinion will converge.  But where knowledge gathering systems converge that is the truth, by definition.  By true, we mean, as Glen puts it when he is channeling Peirce, we do not expect to be surprised….ever…. . <==nst] 

To believe that it is "locally true", without further elaboration, should therefore means something like: It will not be found wanting here, and though that suggests a larger relationship to be discovered, frankly I'm comfortable not trying to figuring out what the relevant properties of "here" are. 

But, of course, the game of science is largely a game of being deeply unsatisfied with beliefs that we have noticed are "merely" of local utility; the science game is a quest to find the higher-order belief that connects the "locally true" beliefs into a "closer to globally true" belief.  

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Supervisory Survey Statistician

U.S. Marine Corps

On Mon, Dec 31, 2018 at 3:28 PM uǝlƃ ☣ <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com> > wrote:

The link doesn't work for me.  But I suspect: Yes!  In all my posts, I've tried to push for "True as far as it goes" ... or "true for now, maybe not true later", "true over here but not over there", etc.  Time is an important, but not the only factor.  Feedback often assumes time.  But all it really needs is some monotonically increasing parameter.  If Perician metaphysics hinges on the stability and uniqueness of the limit points, then it seems a lot like ToEs in physics, it may explain some very persnickety parts of reality, but it'll struggle with things like unicorns or, say, racism.

On 12/31/18 12:15 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:
> At CMU I implemented an algorithm called CCD (cyclic causal discovery)
> which could infer feedback in causal graphs from observational data.  Is
> that relevant?
> 
> Spirtes, P., Glymour, C., and Scheines, R. Kauffman, S.,Aimale, V., &
> Wimberly, F. (2001). Constructing Bayesian Network Models of Gene
> Expression Networks from Microarray Data
> <http://www.hss.cmu.edu/philosophy/scheines/bnforgenes.pdf>, in *Proceedings
> of the Atlantic Symposium on Computational Biology, Genome Information
> Systems and Technology*, Duke University, March.

-- 
☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================
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
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/FRIAM-COMIC> 
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20181231/f5360e6d/attachment.html>