[FRIAM] Movement vs. Behavior, and what's in the Black Box

Thu May 14 18:40:51 EDT 2020

"We need to nail down the metaphors: momentum, mass, velocity, constant,
force, not to mention, particle, wave, string, quantum, atom. et. al."

My dad was a member of a team that designed and built nuclear submarines
successfully.  I wonder if they realized they were working with metaphors.

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, May 14, 2020, 3:58 PM Prof David West <profwest at fastmail.fm> wrote:

> Eric said: "Whenever a given range of phenomenon start to get scienced, we
> rapidly find out that we need to nail down the vocabulary beyond the
> flexibility usually allowed in lay conversations about a topic ... But in a
> physics conversation we would take out the casual usages and limit
> ourselves to the latter; momentum would be a property of mass at
> velocity, which stays constant unless acted upon by a force."
>
> We need to nail down the metaphors: momentum, mass, velocity, constant,
> force, not to mention, particle, wave, string, quantum, atom. et. al.
>
> davew
>
>
> On Thu, May 14, 2020, at 10:57 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
>
> Jon,
> "Decide" is a weird way to put it.
>
> Whenever a given range of phenomenon start to get scienced, we rapidly
> find out that we need to nail down the vocabulary beyond the flexibility
> usually allowed in lay conversations about a topic. We can, for example,
> allow "He's got momentum" to mean all sorts of things in a lay
> conversation. We might talk about broad social phenomenon such as how
> "Bernie has momentum in the polls" or "M. Night Shyamalan's career lost
> momentum after a string of flops, but he seems to be getting some of that
> momentum back now",  or about general laziness such as "I'm not going to do
> the gardening my wife keeps asking about, because momentum", *and *we
> also could mean that there is a movement that will not alter without the
> application of force such as "He's not going to stop before he hits that
> wall, too much momentum." But in a physics conversation we would take out
> the casual usages and limit ourselves to the latter; momentum would be a
> property of mass at velocity, which stays constant unless acted upon by a
> force. Hell, Merrium-Webster even offers "momentum" a definition of "force
> or speed of movement", where in that physics conversation "force" and
> "speed" are clearly distinguished concepts, that are definitely *not *
> momentum.
>
> Similarly, if we want to talk seriously about psychology, we need to nail
> down some vocabulary that will allow us to talk/think rigorously about the
> phenomenon in question. We need some terminology by which to refer to the
> distinction between the movements of the dead duck (or rock) thrown out the
> window and the movements of the live duck thrown out a window. And, as we
> already covered, that distinction isn't *just *a matter of falling,
> because we want to put Nick's post-defenestration flailing in the same
> broad category as the more elegant movements of the live duck.
>
> Note that, if you aren't interested in *that *distinction that is a
> different issue. Lot's of people aren't interested in any particular
> specialized science, and that is entirely unrelated to whether the science
> needs a specialized vocabulary to operate effectively. And while science
> frequently go through phases of emphasizing vocabulary that refers to
> processes that are not easy to observe, those can't be the terms that
> define the domain of the science. What are the observable phenomenon that
> lead us to ask questions about psychology? What are the methods by which
> those observations are made? Until we answer those types of questions, it
> is dramatically premature to start speculating about what
> hidden-unobservables might be at play. And, there is every reason to
> believe that our interest starts with behavior. "Why did he do that?" "Why
> am I acting this way?" When we wonder "Why is he angry at me?", the start
> of that question is a witnessed (or reported) action.
>
> Could other phenomenon end up in our bucket at some point? Sure, just like
> in any other science. But you can't even figure out where those other
> things start, until you know the limits of where the base concepts take
> you. Though I think some followers of James J. Gibson's Ecological
> Psychology, for example, take his contributions to the field farther than
> is warranted, he absolutely showed that basic principles of perceptual
> systems can get us much, much farther than previously thought, including
> providing solutions to how people act successfully in situations where most
> believe that advanced computational thinking is required. We need to nail
> down the basic concepts, and then do the same type of push Gibson did to
> determine their limits.
>
> In that context, it seems fair to begin using "behavior" in a more
> technical sense. Once that is done, we could actually answer your question
> about the tree and the falling seeds, but before that, it would just seem
> like spinning our wheels.
>
>
> -----------
> Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
> Department of Justice - Personnel Psychologist
> American University - Adjunct Instructor
>
> <echarles at american.edu>
>
>
> On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 1:07 PM Jon Zingale <jonzingale at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Eric,
> I have some concern that once we *decide* the dead duck was not behaving,
> that we would avoid the dropped coin. I get that we wouldn't want to
> apply the verb *flailing* to the coin except perhaps in a moment of
> poetry.
> This is the season to witness cottonwood drifts, though. Better might
> be the helicopter like motions of maple seedpods. These adaptations,
> which carry the future of the species, are shaped so that they behave
> meaningfully when coupled with their environment. Would you hesitate
> to call the motions of the cottonwood seedpod, in its environment,
> behavior?
> Is it too early in this conversation, or even inappropriate to ask whose
> behavior it would be?
>
> Frank,
> Thank you for mentioning covariant tensors, I enjoyed walking
> around my neighborhood thinking of them and of a response to you.
> While it seems to me that a coffee cup is less abstract than a covariant
> tensor, the latter isn't free of material or phenomenal foundation. If I
> witness a grade schooler attempting to *pushforward* what I know to be
> a covariant tensor, then I know that they are not likely thinking about a
> covariant tensor, even if they wished that they were. If on the other hand,
> they were clear on *pullingback* whatever it is they believed acted like a
> covariant tensor, then I would likely believe they had a covariant tensor
> in mind. Where the coffee cup, arguably is *just* a thing. A covariant
> tensor is a thing which obeys strict rules of behavior. For example, while
> I could use a coffee cup as a hammer, I am not convinced that I could
> use a covariant tensor as a hammer. It may be the case that to resolve a
> covariant tensor with an fMRI, we would need to witness one thinking of
> a covariant tensor through time.
>
> Glen,
> Maybe we could also use the term *bracketed* for those things which
> we wish to keep outside of the Bekenstein bound. Like yourself, I am
> not really a stickler for what terms we use. I would and have claimed
> that *this is how the inductor behaves in this circuit* while explaining
> to family or friends how one of my synthesizers works. What I would
> like to glean in the context of this conversation is whether or not this
> attribution to the inductor is a metaphor. If it is a metaphor here, then
> I would like to understand why.
>
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