[FRIAM] better simulating actual FriAM

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

J

"entails"

N

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Jon Zingale
Sent: Monday, July 20, 2020 5:11 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] better simulating actual FriAM

Nick,

You say: 'Glen originally mentioned a GENerator/ PHENomenon distinction
which seems to be the broader of the two and does not forbid downward
causation.'

I feel comfortable saying gen-phen-like maps. I am in the investigative
modality at present and have not yet nailed down for myself the precise
meanings of any chosen lexicon. I am proceeding by allowing the scope of
definition, of a notion, to vary indirectly over the course of the
discussion, to the extent that I am able.
Our discussion covered a lot of ground with a lot of ideas coming from each
of us, adopting and integrating the batch comes with no obvious algorithm.
In the end, I may abandon gen-phen-like in favor of another signifier or it
may come to mean something significant based on the context of this
conversation. Who knows?

In vFriam discussion, I mostly remember us talking about the function-goal
distinction and thermostats. You conjectured that the two collections are
exclusive, and I spent time thinking about what this could mean. I am
thinking about the collection of functions being of a different type than
the collection of goals, and there possibly being construals of goals into
the collection of functions. Conceptually, this makes room to consider the
difference between a goal and a goal wrapped in functions clothing. The
particular project I am engaged in here is to flesh this concept out a bit
more. I haven't yet gotten down into the sticks weeds and certainly am not
yet able to work easily with emergence in this framework. More to come, to
the extent that this stays interesting to me.

You say: 'One rule of that game, I think, which I may have violated myself
in this discussion, is that things cannot cause things. Only events can
cause events.'

Along with Glen, I am not sure I have decided to limit the scope of
definition around causation. That as Frank points out, "causation is a
relation between events", does not preclude there being other relations
between events nor causation being a relation between other things, does it?
If our conversations were intended to be type-safe, I could perhaps be
persuaded the other way.

You say: 'The reason is that the notion of cause involves temporal order'

What about something being logically prior rather than just temporally
prior?
Perhaps, we would use a different word than cause?



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