[FRIAM] Nick's monism kick

Fri Sep 30 18:31:38 EDT 2022

And the student for mentioning pragmatism.  

Get those chemicals off the bench, and THEN you can ride your high horses. 

That’s the little-p pragmatist in me speaking. 

n

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2022 6:19 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Nick's monism kick

My conclusion:  the Lab Tech was dumb for mentioning atoms.

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

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Wed, Sep 28, 2022, 3:21 PM Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com <mailto:eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com> > wrote:

Two preliminaries:
1) For what it's worth, I am trying to back Nick into a different corner than the one Mike thinks I am.... but Mike is correct in seeing that I don't want to let Nick weasel out of the confrontation. It is perfectly valid for Nick to point out that he is proud of any student who takes anything from one course to another, but that doesn't speak to whether he would be happy or not seeing this particular interaction play out due to the effects of his teaching. 

2) Both Mike and Nick want to read into the lab tech something I was exactly excluding from the lab tech's reaction - a sophisticated understanding of the situation that matches what they would like to have a student glean from their classrooms. In the email I am currently replying to, Nick says something like "I don't recognize the student as saying what I would say" and to that I reply "Exactly!" The student isn't a stand in for you, they are a person your teachings have significantly influenced.  The student, *like you*, doesn't see the role that "real" or "fact" play in the conversation, and *like you* any hint of "essentialism", especially connected with something that sounds like a crude "materialism", makes her scoff.  

The basics of the initial scenario are: 

A lab tech is giving a safety warning. The student, rather than complying with that warning, tries to initiate a conversation about how the words used in the warning make it seem like maybe the lab tech could learn a thing or two about philosophy from Dr. Thompson (a typical sophomoric-sophomore way to respond). The lab tech doesn't give a shit about any of that, and reiterates the safety warning, elaborating it in ways that make sense *to him* by adding in words like "fact" and "atoms". The student scoffs even harder now, because this poor fellow can't even understand that she is trying to help him learn how to think better. As you listen in the hall, the student's responses might not be *exactly* what you would say in her place, but it is obvious that she is *trying* to do the type of conversation you modeled in your class, and that what is happening is due to your influence as an instructor. The culmination of the back and forth is that, because the student is doing everything other than complying with the warning, the lab tech - in his role as the person charged with maintaining lab safety - kicks her out of the chemistry lab. 

And the basic questions to Nick were:
How do you feel witnessing that? Proud, worried, confused? Does it sound like the student was getting the message you intended, or has the intended message gone awry?

In the second version, I tried to make the culmination of the interaction even more extreme, so that the key aspect of the interaction - that the student was responding to a safety warning by talking philosophy - was even more obvious. As the conversation continues, the increasingly exasperated lab tech brings in more and more potentially-irrelevant terms and concepts for the student to smugly nit pick, until eventually the thing-being-warned-about actually occurs and several people are grievously injured.  

How was I hoping Nick would respond? I was hoping it would look something like this: 

1) No, I would not be happy if I overheard that interaction.
2) She misunderstood X and/or she apparently didn't grok the part where I explained Y.
3) If I had done a better job in the classroom, she would have cared about understanding what his warning meant in terms of practice. (And I imagine anything that Nick adds to illustrate this point would lines up pretty well with Mike's dialog.) 

If Nick has finally wrapped his head around the scene being played out, I still want to hear from him what X and/or Y are. GIVEN that the student seems to have a reasonable - if imperfect - understanding of the conversational side of things, i.e., given that the student is saying things to the Lab Tech that are very close to what you (Nick) would say in the student's place, what exactly is it that she failed to appreciate about the point of view you were presenting? 

On Tue, Sep 27, 2022 at 11:51 PM <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> > wrote:

Dear Friends,  

Eric has prompted me to wade into this thread, but I confess I have not well understood the issues, even from the start.   So much of subsequent characterization of my position feels so foreign to me that I don’t now how to

relate it to what I believe.   As understand the three of us, Mike is trying to represent the True Peirce, I am trying to represent the Peirce position insofar as it is a monist position, and Eric is trying to understand Peirce insofar as he agrees with James.  But I cannot even follow those usual themes through the present discussion.  

Even the original hypothetical was confusing to me.  Of course the web of terms employed by the lab tech, Pragmatically viewed, encapsulates a broad network of knowledge concerning when things explode.  And I suppose, therefore, Mike might see me as anti-Pragmatic (and merely pragmatic) when I stress the relation between mixing THESE flasks under THESE CIRCUMSTANCES and bad consequences.  I accept that criticism, but I don’t really see him making it.  

Lab tech: What? I'm talking about a real danger, and I need you to be careful so it doesn't happen.  
Student: Yes, exactly, you believe that those experiences will follow if certain experiences happen now. 
Lab tech: Huh? No. I'm telling you how the physical atoms work. I mean... yes... the part about the explosion is something that would happen under certain circumstances in the future, but the chemical reaction and the damage it could cause are well known facts.

I never really understood how the words real and facts are working in this hypothetical and why the Labtech thinks that their safety, in the instant, is better guaranteed by knowing about atoms, than by knowing to keep the two flasks separate.  

As for the rest, I am completely lost.  I really need to pull it out into a single document and study the damn thing.  I am torn between an impulse to capitalize on Mike’s participation and the fact that I have much else on my plate right now. 

Are we perhaps writing something here?   If so, I will  try to do my best to put aside everything else and pitch in.  

I love you guys, honest!

Nick 

Nick Thompson

 <mailto:ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

 <https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

From: Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> > 
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2022 12:47 PM
To: Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com <mailto:eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com> >
Cc: M. D. Bybee <mikebybee at earthlink.net <mailto:mikebybee at earthlink.net> >; Jon Zingale <jonzingale at gmail.com <mailto:jonzingale at gmail.com> >; friam at redfish.com <mailto:friam at redfish.com> 
Subject: Re: Nick's monism kick

I am at the moment living in a remote colony of rich peoples shacks, Hence no Internet.

But I like the question so well I am forwarding it to the list. I will get back to you when I do not have to thumb my answer.

N

Sent from my Dumb Phone

On Aug 30, 2022, at 11:27 AM, Eric Charles <eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com <mailto:eric.phillip.charles at gmail.com> > wrote:

Nick, 

You have been asking for "an assignment", and I think I finally thought of a good one for you. (And I think it might spur some interesting discussion, which is why others are copied here.) 

Imagine that you are still teaching at Clark, and that you have been tentatively including your current monism more and more in some of the classes. When walking by the Chemistry labs, you recognize the voice of an enthusiastic student you had last quarter,, and you start to ease drop. The conversation is as follows:

Lab tech: Be careful with that! If it mixes with the potassium solution, it can become explosive, we would have to evacuate the building.
Student: What do you mean?
Lab tech: If the potassium mixes with chlorides at the right ratio, then we are *probably* safe while it is in solution, but if it dries up, it is a hard-core explosive and it wouldn't take much to level the whole building. We would have to take that threat seriously, and evacuate the building until I made the solution safe. 
Student: Oh, a predictions about future experiences, I like those! 
Lab tech: What? I'm talking about a real danger, and I need you to be careful so it doesn't happen.  
Student: Yes, exactly, you believe that those experiences will follow if certain experiences happen now. 
Lab tech: Huh? No. I'm telling you how the physical atoms work. I mean... yes... the part about the explosion is something that would happen under certain circumstances in the future, but the chemical reaction and the damage it could cause are well known facts. Look, man, if you aren't here to learn how to be safe with the chemicals, then maybe you should just leave. 
Student: Wait, seriously? You aren't some kind of *materialist* are you?!? You know anything we could talk about are *just* experiences, right? It's experiences all the way down!

Listening in, you can tell that the student is taking this line based on your influence, because it sounds like things they were kinda-sorta starting to grock in your class. 

How do you feel hearing that? Proud, worried, confused? Does it sound like the student was getting the message you intended, or has the intended message gone awry? Would you have said something similar to the Lab Tech under the same circumstances? 

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