[FRIAM] Is Chemero TRULY a pragmatist.

[thompnickson2 at gmail.com]

A dagger plunged into my ideological heart.   You could have called me a Trumpist, and the wound would not have been so great.  

[sigh]

n

Nick Thompson
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?>$
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2021 1:03 PM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Is Chemero TRULY a pragmatist.

Primarily: There can be an ultimately arrived at position that is not the prior waypoint positions. The 2 named claims (metaphysical and epistemological) might be "out of the way" waypoints toward that *other truth* which is neither metaphorical nor instrumental. From this perspective Chemero's gist seems like a targeting of that possibility ... an attempt to see further down the process. That sounds pragmatic to me. And even if we arrive at the latter first (a metaphorical or instrumental thing-a-majiggy), it doesn't imply that's the end of the settling out process. We don't know. We won't know ... until the universe ends in heat death. 

Secondarily: Computationalists need not be representationalists. Analog computing is the process of modeling by which one uses non-representationalist things as *behavioral* stand-ins for other non-representationalist things. True, it's very difficult for us analogists to stop others from representationalizing our thing-in-the-loop things ... coming up with schema by which some things can be replaced by other things and classifying all the things that can stand in for some thing into symbolic classes. But we continue to *try*. This is why the concept of an analog is distinct from the concept of a metaphor.

Nick is the dyed-in-the-wool representationalist, not a stereotype of computationalists. The Lady doth protest too much. >8^D


On 11/11/21 10:29 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> And I quote:
> 
>  
> 
> When one proclaims oneself to be an antirepresentationalist, as proponents of radical embodied cognitive science do, there are two things one might be saying.  First, one might be making a claim about the nature of cognitive systems, namely that nothing in them is a representation.  For the rest o this chapter I will call this the metaphysical claim.  Second, one might be claiming that our best explanation of cognitive systems will not involve representations.  I will call this the epistemological claim.  These are pretty clearly separate claims.  It is easy to imagine, for example, that the metaphysical  claim is true and that humans really are just complex dynamical systems, but they are so complex that the best way for us (with our limited intellects) to explain them is by metaphorically or instrumentally ascribing [to] them mental representation.  [Chemero, A. 2011. /Radical embodied cognitive science./  MIT: Cambridge, MA. p67.] 
> 
>  
> 
> Given the pragmatic Maxim concerning meaning, /that the meaning of a term is just those practices of investigation that the term’s use would imply/, how is this passage not anti-pragmatic?  What other truth is there but a metaphorically or instrumentally best explanation? 
> 
>  
> 
> Chemero’s overall position is that his RADICAL  embodied cognitive science is the only rightful heir of the American Naturalism of which Peirce and James are the progenitors.  Therefore you, many FRIAMMERS just might just see this as a internecine dustup in the anti-representationalist coven, and because you are computationalists (ergo, representationalists), ignore it.  That’s OK.   Others may say “-ist, -ist, ist; blah, blah blah.”  That’s ok too.  But perhaps those few of you who are members of the coven may want to help me square this circle.  

-- 
"Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie."
☤>$ uǝlƃ


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