[FRIAM] Complexity Returns to the Mother Church (or v.v?).

[Frank Wimberly]

Search for "Glymour publications CMU waste mind" to read a paper on related
topics by my erstwhile boss, who is a well-known philosopher of science.
Don't worry, he has a very good sense of humor.

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 Fri, Oct 12, 2018, 4:46 PM Nick Thompson <nickthompson at earthlink.net>
wrote:

> *A Homily from the Mother Church*,
>
>
>
> Dear Bretheren and Sisteren,
>
>
>
> Was it because Robert Holmes returned to the fold, or was it just a
> coincidence that today we returned to discussions of such topics as
> emergence, determination, downward causality, and the possibility of
> explanatory reduction of all phenomena to particle physics.   Now, in the
> past, where this matter has always seemed to settle, is on the idea that
> while it is IN PRINCIPLE true that everything is determined and that, if we
> had but time, and computer enough, we could predict the effect of the
> butterfly’s flap on Hurricane Michael, in PRACTICE it’s a waste of time
> thinking about because we can’t, we won’t, and we never will.  This
> solution has the joint benefit of conceding that phys*ics* is the queen
> of sciences, yet allowing us to tell  phys*icists* to go screw themselves
> because, for most of the things we think about, they are TOTALLY
> irrelevant.
>
>
>
> I have never been happy with this solution.  It’s just not *Jesuitical *for
> me.  As many of you know (because you have suffered through it) I have read
> a lot of C. S. Peirce since the last time we talked about these issues at
> FRIAM, so I was led to wonder Peirce has given me any purchase on these
> questions in the meantime.  So here is what I came away from our
> discussions with:
>
>
>
> 1.       *Determination means just, event A is accompanied by a higher
> than average probability of event B.*  Now, please, I would like to
> bracket for once that fact that what I just wrote is non-sense.
> Probabilities are relative frequencies and inhere, therefore, to categories
> of events, not to individual events.  Unless we are careful, this will lead
> us to an uncomfortable discussion of how we will ever know if event A1 and
> A2 belong to the same category and, I think, will soon discover that we are
> in a vicious circle.  So PLEASE, let’s not go there.  Allow me: “*Determination
> means just, event A is accompanied by a higher than average probability of
> event B.*  ”
>
> 2.       Every event is accompanied by an infinity of other events which
> have nothing to do with it.  I type the words, “Vladimir, Go Brush Your
> Teeth” and, *mirabile dictu*, Putin is brushing his teach.  Yet there is
> no connection between those events.  Most pairs of events are like that.
> Or, as Peirce puts it, the world is just about as random as it could be.
>
> 3.       If there is ANY order in the world – and Peirce thinks there is
> – organisms that smoked that order out would be much better off than
> organisms that ignored it.  Groups of organisms that learned from one
> another such contingencies would be better off than groups that didn’t ,
> etc.  Indeed, physical structures that were in accord with such lawful
> relations (think orbits) would be more enduring than others.  Thus, that
> the world around us is mostly orderly is because we have adapted to,
>  sought out and thrived in to that small part of it where order prevails.
>
> 4.       Not all determination is simple.  Some events are themselves
> complex events.  So event X can consist of the concatenation of events A,
> B, and C, and event Y can be determined by such a concatenation.  Any event
> that is determined by the organization of its component events is said to
> be an *emergent*.  That a triangular structure holds weight is an
> emergent of the placement and attachment of its three legs.
>
> 5.       Upward causation is partial.  Levels of organization supervene
> upon the properties of the events of which they are composed.  From the
> strength of the triangle one can infer something about the parts that make
> it up, but from the parts themselves, lacking information about their
> arrangement, one cannot determine that the triangle will be strong.
>
> 6.       Some structures are capable of generating their parts.  A
> supercell thunderstorm can arrange the atmosphere around it in a manner
> that will generate more thunderstorms.  A protein can arrange amino acids
> to make a protein.  In such systems, at least, there is downward
> causality.
>
> 7.       So, is everything reducible to particle physics?  No.  Not
> unless you believe that two by four’s are particles. I would submit,
> therefore, that every physicist, no matter how wise, no matter how big his
> computer might be, will require engineers to construct his particle
> accelerator.
>
> So there!
>
>
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>
> ============================================================
> 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
> 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/20181012/ec037683/attachment.html>