[FRIAM] Radical Empiricism

[Steve Smith]

If/when/as AI (such a broad term, no?) can be used in the mode you 
describe here somewhat transparently I would likely be open to an 
"augmented intuition" mode of use....

and as a point of gratuitous contention, how *does* one tell the 
difference between "stupid nonsense" and "an abductive candidate for 
experimental research"?   Is there truly a qualitative difference (in 
the world) or is that an artifact of our own judgement(s) based on some 
quantitative threshold(s)?

Your description of "T" Truth as a spanning kernel for a plurality of 
theories and models feels quite apt and the way I took the name of the 
Docuseries "Closer to Truth", very assiduously avoiding the specific 
"the Truth"...   and implying an "asymptotic" approach not a collision 
course.

As I look at the (near) decomposable systems and map it onto (near) 
spanning trees within process-relation networks of those systems I 
imagine these LLM training exercises building/finding highly connected 
clusters (like ganglia in vertebrate neural systems) which fundamentally 
reflect what KellyAnne Conway so naively claimed as "alternate realities".

If there is a singular capital T Truth (or capital R Reality) then it is 
probably at most apprehended by finite beings (who have not achieved 
Satori, nod to DaveW) as the superposition of many sub-complete T' (or 
R') descriptions?

- Steve

On 6/5/23 10:18 AM, glen wrote:
> But this misses the point, I think. And, in fact, I think it's a 
> mistake to focus too much on (natural) language models at all, even 
> for things that *seem* to be all about language, like philosophy. I'm 
> most interested in the concept of an embedding 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded>. Ideally, I'd like to be able 
> to query a modeling system (e.g. decoding/encoding transformers) for a 
> (vector) space that (accurately) encodes *both* James and Husserl. 
> Then that would help satisfy Marcus' and EricS' task to see if there 
> are gaps between them, or not.
>
> The problem has nothing to do, really, with how much one might have to 
> read/think in order to understand anything. Understanding is a 
> delusion. What matters is the differences and similarities between any 
> 2 or more things (processes, devices, systems, whatever 'thing' might 
> mean).
>
> These automatic modelers (like the transformers) might help us do 
> that. As for some kind of "ground truth", something that might provide 
> a foundation like the physicists seem to think they have, if our 
> automatic modeling device is capable of embedding all (or most) of all 
> the models surrounding us (over time, space, and individual theorists 
> or collections of theorists), then we can experimentally test for 
> kernels/bases that can span *most* of those theories/models. If such a 
> kernel exists, then it is a candidate for the capital T truth, and any 
> theory/model that is not spanned by that kernel is either stupid 
> nonsense or an abductive candidate for experimental research.
>
> On 6/4/23 18:48, Frank Wimberly wrote:
>> As one of the few, if not the only, person who has been a full time 
>> employee of a philosophy department for multiple years, I am quick to 
>> defend my former colleagues.  Read "Actual Causation and Thought 
>> Experiments" by Glymour and Wimberly in J. K. Campbell, M. O'Rourke & 
>> H. S. Silverstein (eds.), Causation and Explanation. MIT Press
>>
>> You don't have to read thousands, or even hundreds, of pages to be 
>> able to grok that paper.
>>
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 4, 2023, 7:30 PM David Eric Smith <desmith at santafe.edu 
>> <mailto:desmith at santafe.edu>> wrote:
>>
>>     So there’s a rather concrete way in which one can imagine 
>> ChatGPT’s being particularly useful as a time-saver.
>>
>>     I have heard it said (and find it persuasive), that philosophy is 
>> different from physics because what philosophers want to do and 
>> settle for being is different from that for physicists.
>>
>>     A physicist can pick up F = ma and start from there to get 
>> something done.
>>
>>     Each philosopher is, in a sense, a new beginning of the universe, 
>> and you are expected to read thousands of pages of his composition to 
>> be permitted to engage with him. That is a good barrier to exclude 
>> pretty-much-everbody from most conversations.
>>
>>     But there are specific topics on which engaging with this group 
>> is a game of whack-a-mole, and it would be _so_ satisfying to catch 
>> that damned mole far enough out of the hole to pin him down to the 
>> board for once.
>>
>>     It is on this point:
>>
>>     Summarizing what, as Marcus rightly says, as been repeated 10^n 
>> times before, CGTP quotes:
>>
>>     At the core of radical empiricism is the concept of "pure 
>> experience." According to James, pure experience refers to the 
>> immediate, unmediated apprehension of reality, devoid of any 
>> conceptual or interpretative filters. It involves experiencing the 
>> world as it is, without imposing preconceived notions or theories 
>> onto the experience.
>>
>>     What the HELL does anyone think this is supposed to refer to?  I 
>> am not asking whether it actually does refer to anything, but rather 
>> what anyone believes he is saying by it.
>>
>>     And I can ask that in a rather concrete way.  Were James to 
>> engage with Husserl, would he claim that the access to the “immediate 
>> apprehension” is by way of the same portal as Husserl’s epoche?
>>
>>     I ask because they set themselves up to make a particular style 
>> of assertion.
>>
>>     By analogy, we have seen that human bodies can do things like 
>> Amanars and any of the 4 Bileses (which should have been 5, and would 
>> have been were it not for COVID).  But that doesn’t mean every human 
>> body can do any of them.  There is rather a lot of specific training 
>> that goes into becoming one of the bodies that can do any of this.
>>
>>     The various “internal” experience-focused philosophers present 
>> these things as doable, but technical and particular and requiring 
>> training.
>>
>>     But if you then ask what that is about, you get either a demand 
>> to follow several thousand pages in each person’s formulation, or the 
>> kind of cloudy motivational life-coach speech that almost all of the 
>> CGPT summary is composed of.  (Reminds me of something I once heard 
>> said of chimp speech: if you aren’t there working with them, you 
>> cannot anticipate how mind-numbingly repetitive it is).
>>
>>     So rather than asking “what it is” (the skill or whatever), I can 
>> ask “If they were arguing with each other, would they even assert to 
>> each other, each with his supposed privileged appreciation of the 
>> mysteries, assert or deny that they are referring to the same thing.
>>
>>     This might allow us to not have to approach the full body of 
>> philosophical literature as if each corpus were Sui generis.
>>
>>     Eric
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>     On Jun 5, 2023, at 2:43 AM, Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net 
>>> <mailto:jofr at cas-group.net>> wrote:
>>>
>>>     ChatGPT now allows sharing conversations. I've asked it about 
>>> William James book "Essays in Radical Empiricism"
>>> https://chat.openai.com/share/375aef4e-a8d6-467e-8061-bd85b341c46b 
>>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fchat.openai.com%2fshare%2f375aef4e-a8d6-467e-8061-bd85b341c46b&c=E,1,SrWav4ypspeJiXxANsU84IqWFKy5OPWIx-qHp0YLHpEHLinoe3Q3aAeuo_0eErOe6fnJYosh3T6fflwMl7CsxV2wKAIIwCbBlleeoZM8db1fEE4,&typo=1&ancr_add=1> 
>>>
>>>
>
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