[FRIAM] from 5/15 virtual FRIAM

Sat May 16 23:39:32 EDT 2020

When I was in highschool I read a book about the Great Books by Mortimer J
Adler.  He said that it's easy to define truth but hard to decide what's
true.  According to him a proposition is true if it asserts what is the
case.  An analytic statement.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Sat, May 16, 2020, 9:30 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hmmm.  I am afraid I may have underemphasized something in my discussions
> of “truth”.  The Pragmatic Maxim (which is what Jon refers to), is
>
>
>
> *Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we
> conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of
> these effects is the whole of our conception of the object*. (CP 5.402;
> emphasis added)as cribbed from
> http://www.asatheory.org/current-newsletter-online/the-pragmatic-maxim
>
>
>
> Please note that, as applied to the word, “truth”,  the maxim is a thesis,
> not about what truth IS, but what we mean when we say something is a
> truth.  The consequences for scientific practice – what I call the
> practicial consequences – of looking for the truth of the matter is to send
> every scientist looking for that answer upon which science will rest in the
> very long run.
>
>
>
> This is an interesting example of intensionality.  Nothing in the
> pragmatic maxim implies that there is a truth of any matter.  It implies
> only that when you say anything is true, you are implying that, in the very
> long run opinion, will come to agree with you.
>
>
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Nicholas Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
>
> Clark University
>
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
>
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> *On Behalf Of *Frank Wimberly
> *Sent:* Saturday, May 16, 2020 7:47 PM
> *To:* The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
> friam at redfish.com>
> *Subject:* Re: [FRIAM] from 5/15 virtual FRIAM
>
>
>
> Jon-
>
>
>
> While reading your essay I had several associations.  I recently read the
> assertion that in developing axiomatic systems and proving the entailed
> theorems mathematicians are writing for God as the authority.  So
> mathematics, from that point of view is a conversation with God.
>
>
>
> At the other extreme (?) I thought Reuben Hersh held a view similar to the
> one you attribute to Nick:  that mathematics is the set of theorems that
> mathematicians agree to by consensus.
>
>
>
> I agree that Newtonian physics and differential calculus are the correct
> model for objects moving in a vacuum.  I was given an $85 ticket by a
> rookie police officer for rolling through a stop sign.  She said my wheels
> never completely stopped turning  I don't think any experienced officer
> would have given me a citation.  I had fantasies of writing to the judge
> explaining that an object moving along a continuous path can stop for zero
> seconds (unit of time irrelevant).  This happens when you throw an object
> straight up (directly away from the center of the earth).  I don't know
> about whether space and time have the Hausdorff property but for traffic
> purposes it doesn't matter.
>
>
>
> In the Woody Allen film "Sleeper", Allen's character wakes up 200 years in
> the future.  He's getting in to know a stranger and he tells him that he
> owned a health food store in Greenwich Village.  The stranger looked
> puzzled and then said, "Oh, those were the days before scientists realized
> that the ideal diet consists of steak and chocolate milkshakes".
>
>
>
> I feel, without evidence, that mankind will not last long enough to see
> all science as settled.  There is hope for pure math.
>
>
>
> Is any of this responsive to your email?
>
>
>
> Frank
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly
> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> 505 670-9918
> Santa Fe, NM
>
>
>
> On Sat, May 16, 2020, 7:07 PM Jon Zingale <jonzingale at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Disclaimers:
> 1. TLDR Warning
> 2. These opinions will be poorly founded and are subject to change.
>
>
>
> Dave,
>
> You write: `Nick raised the issue of being contrarian with regards
> science and
>
> could get no one to admit to anything beyond ignoring doctor's orders.`
>
>
> Questions like the one Nick posed fill me with a sense of *aporia*.
> I am left without an immediate response. Personally, I find it useful
> to factor science into a number of modes or senses. The ultimate goal
> for me is to sketch out the kind of space where I can investigate the
> *shape*
> of my own conception of science. Ultimately, whatever science is to me
> cannot be a single consistent entity, but rather a kind of *eidetic
> variation*.
>
> * Science as institution. Science can be identified with its institutions:
> STEM outreach after-school programs, publishing companies, research
> centers,
> and the like. Here science is sometimes portrayed as a career with clear
> delineations regarding who is *good* or *bad* at science. Its goals are
> set by
> commitees and participation is all but automated through bureaucratic
> policy.
> The authority we assert when we reference expertise, degrees and
> associations
> is one of institutional authority. While there is probably a lot for me to
> pick
> apart here, I will stick to two or three contrary beliefs I hold. For me,
> the
> notion of STEM is awkward exactly because mathematics is a liberal art and
>
> not necessarily a science. Mathematics exists to describe relationships
> and to
> facilitate thought. It's home is not far from painting, drawing or the
> activities of thespians. Another belief I hold is that any institution is
> susceptible to *legitimation crisis*. It is very possible, as is often
> argued of
> our news outlets, for scientific institutions to fail in their duty to
> produce
> science.
>
>
>
> For anyone who is interested in these potential short-comings I recommend
>
> reading the history of the Belousov-
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belousov%E2%80%93Zhabotinsky_reaction>Zhabotinsky
> reaction
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belousov%E2%80%93Zhabotinsky_reaction>.
> While the story ends
>
> well, it leaves the critical reader wondering what *good science* has
> been left to die.
>
> Here, I hold the belief that there is very likely science, as legitimated
> by other
>
> scientific senses, which have been de-legitimated by science as
> institution.
>
>
>
> Science as institution is not itself consistently decided. It is prone
> to as-well-as open to inter-institutional disagreement. Putting aside for
> the
> moment that agreement will one day be reached (an ontological claim that
>
> may itself not be amenable to scientific inquiry) any *active* area of
> research
> is riddled with competing theories. Extreme cases include cosmology and
> string theory. A weaker example is the Feynman-Wheeler electron
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe>.
>
>
> * Science as abstract authority. It is a personal pet peeve of mine when
> someone forms a sentence like, "Well, science says X". It is a strange
> side-
> effect of our culture that the notion of science can be lifted to the
> status
> of abstract authority. The function of such a statement is to end
> discussion,
> to leave ideas stillborn. To the degree that I find this
> behavior appalling,
>
> I hold beliefs contrary to science in this sense.
>
> * Science as methodology. Science as the product of scientific methodology
> has a great number of sub-topics whose surface I will barely ever get to
> know.
> Scientific method, peer-review publishing, description production,
> explanation
> production, Occam's Razor and the constructivists. Many scientific results
> have at the core of their methodology useful but known-to-be troublesome
> assumptions. The scientific method itself is a co-recursive algorithm and
> therefore subject to limitations like NP-completeness and decidability.
> At the root of our most trusted tools, like differentiation, hide
> the uncertainties
>
> of second-order logic. In an attempt to remedy perceived failings in the
> tools of
>
> formal logic, the constructivists (under the impetus of Brouwer, Heyting
> and others)
>
> proceeded to develop new logics which in turn were used to create new
> forms of
>
> analysis, non-standard analysis and synthetic differential geometry to
> name two.
>
>
>
> This proliferation of new tools, however, introduce new complexities.
>
> Theorems which were abhorrent in one logical frame (Banach-Tarski) became
>
> non-issues in another, but now in the new frame live other abhorrent
> theorems <https://www.iep.utm.edu/con-math/#SH3a>
>
> which didn't exist in the first (Specker's Theorem). I suspect it will not
> be
>
> possible for science as methodology to decide which logical frame is
> somehow
>
> the *most correct*. As it stands I do value the predictions afforded by a
> classically
>
> founded differential calculus, even if its foundations are unresolvable.
> Perhaps
>
> less controversially, I hold space for the existence of Chaitin random
> numbers.
>
> In a Scientific American article
> <http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~km9/Randomness%20and%20Mathematical.pdf> Chaitin
> writes:
>
>
>
> 'Although randomness can be precisely defined and can even be measured,
> a given number cannot be proved to be random. This enigma establishes a
> limit to what is possible in mathematics'.
>
> Lastly on this point and just to bait Nick...
> Nick often attributes to Peirce that, "Truth is what we will ultimately
> come to agree upon". This idea is perhaps non-scientific in that it
> may be a form of Ramsey statement (thanks Glen!) which falls on the side
> of metaphysics. A truth-principle like this with Ramsey meta-physicality
> would
> suggest that truth is *here*, but we cannot *know* it, despite Nick's
> deepest wishes.
> Further, if we could *know* a thing in this way, we would only be able to
> *verify*
> it once *all of the ballots were in*.
>
> * Science as metaphor. In a *very* *narrow* context, science can be
> construed as
> metaphor between mathematical model and physical observation. Nick often
>
> points out that while *instantaneous velocity* is mathematical, we should
> be leery
>
> of calling it physical. When we apply the notion of an arc to the path of
> a ball,
> we are importing and projecting onto physical space the properties of a
> model.
> These properties almost invariably entail the continuity and smoothness of
> time and of space. Arguably, even time and space are imported. I do believe
> that time and space are *worth the import*, but I do not think of the
> metaphor
> as establishing truth.
>
> * Science as culture. A biologist friend of mine asked me to validate his
> claim that our universe is four dimensional. I took the opportunity to
> elaborate
> on the concept of dimension as I think of it, namely as an assertion about
> linear independence. I attempted to move the conversation to a discussion
> about models and what we intend to describe. I am ok with a four
> dimensional
> time-space if we are discussing Einstein's relativity theory. Clearly, in
> other
> physical contexts I may wish to talk meaningfully about infinite
> dimensional
> Hilbert spaces or six dimensional Calabi-Yau manifolds. He left the
> conversation
> miffed. Science has a cultural component, we argue and push and struggle to
> define scientific contexts with each other. Imre Lakotos wrote a wonderful
> book about this called "Conjectures and Refutations". It playfully covers,
> in dialogue form, the development of modern topology from the perspective
> of mathematics culture.
>
> * Temporality in Science. Because Newton and Einstein held different
> beliefs,
> we cannot rely (nor should we) on science to be consistent in time. We can
> hope,
> along with Nick, that some scientific acquisition will meet the ultimate
> gold-
> standard, jump the limit of our methodologies and finally and gloriously be
> classified as *known true*. While it would likely be the case that if
> Newton
> were here today he would agree that Einstein's theory is better, there are
> other
> examples which exhibit oscillatory behavior. Is coffee good for you? Should
> you avoid red meat? It is hard for me to keep up with the temporality of
> science, and I suspect that we are capable of believing things which are
> not-
> now-but-will-one-day-satisfy the scientific criteria of one or many of the
>
> senses above.
>
> In many ways I feel that I am taking a bold risk in rambling here, so I
> hope
> that it meets your (Dave) satisfaction. I also hope that it inspires others
> to take a chance and spill some *e-ink*.
>
>
>
> Full of it,
>
> Jon
>
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