[FRIAM] [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?

Thu Dec 12 00:01:01 EST 2019

Glen, 

Thanks for taking the time to read what I sent.  That is a great kindness. 

See [semi] larding below:  I am afraid that this will go a lot easier if readers allow me some html.  

Nick Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com

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

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2019 1:17 PM
To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] [EXT] Re: A pluralistic model of the mind?

The thing being left out of this still seems, to me, to be constructive vs ... what? ... analytical explanation. 

Your larger document beats around that bush quite a bit, I think. But I don't think it ever names/tackles the point explicitly. 

[NST===>] I am not sure I quite understand that distinction.  Can you say more?  

When you say things like "explanations are based on prior explanations" and "depends on the understandings that exist between speaker and audience", you're leaving out THE fundamental ontology atop which it's all built ... the building of the experimental apparatus.

[NST===>] Do I escape – or perhaps simply evade –this objection by the pragmatist mantra, “we begin in the middle.”  I think the pragmatic maxim pretty much covers this objection…meaning is in the practicial consequences of our conceptions, so if we are to mean anything by anything, we have to start with some practices, no?  

 Feynman's pithy aphorism applies: What I cannot create, I do not understand.

Explanations facilitate replication. They tell you *how* to do the trick yourself. Descriptions can be explanatory, of course. But they can also be non-explan atory. 

[NST===>] I think I want to insist that there is no description that does not bring some sort of metaphor upon some sort of facts taken to be prior, and hence, no description that is not an explanation.  So, the arrogance of such an assertion being what it is, you have only to provide a single example to send me to the showers.  

And some explanations are more facilitating than others. (E.g. I can write out some obtuse math and print it on paper or I can hand you a floppy disk with some Matlab code on it.)

But the foundation is that we all have the same basic hardware. And *that's* what explanations are built upon. Change the hardware and your explanation becomes mere description. ... E.g. take a big hit of LSD and many explanations become mere descriptions. The evolutionary biological content of your paper (as well as Figure 1.2[†]) seems like it's just crying out for something like "construction". Reading it feels like watching someone struggle for a word that's on the "tip of their tongue".

[NST===>] I am probably being dumb, here, but can you use the word “construction” in the manner in which you would have me use it.   I will copy in the diagram below so that anybody who wants can figure out wtf we are talking about.  Readers should know that I define a “model” as a scientific metaphor, and argue that all scientific descriptions/explanations imply or employ models.  

[†] In particular, if I replace "is the model for" with *generates*[NST===>] d

[NST===>] I like the word generate.  In the mathematical sense.  A function generates y’s from x’s.  Models, or metaphors, do the same thing.  You give me “your love” and I give you back “a red red rose.”  From the one, the metaphor has generated the other. 

, I get some sort of Necker cube flipping feeling.

Levels of Explanation

So far we have argued for two points about explanations: First that they take descriptions for granted, and second that they use models to organize known and hypothetical information about the phenomena they explain. We have also argued that there is no essential difference between the contents of a description and the contents of an explanation, and so we could just as easily have asserted that explanations take other explanations for granted. Together, these two ideas suggest that explanations may be stacked on top of each other, or nested into interconnected sets. Such a structure is called a theory. The simplest theories consist of a nested set of explanations, each member of the set being taken as a description for the purposes of another explanation, and each taking other explanations as descriptions to be explained. This structure is shown in Figure 1.2 below. 

Figure 1.2. A theory represented as a hierarchy of explanations in which each explanation makes use of a model to explain the explanations below it.

On 12/11/19 11:23 AM,  <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com> thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:

> [... the thought experiment being explaining an eraser falling behind 

> a book ...] Working through thought-experiments like the one above 

> leads us to conclude that all descriptions, particularly satisfying 

> ones, are inevitably explanatory and that all explanations are 

> descriptive. And yet, you cannot explain something until you have 

> something to explain – so all explanations must be based on prior 

> descriptions. The only reasonable conclusion, if you take both of 

> these claims at face value, is that all explanations are based on 

> prior explanations! The distinction between description and 

> explanation concerns their position in an argument, not their 

> objectivity or subjectivity in some enduring sense.  Whether a 

> statement is explanatory or descriptive depends upon the 

> understandings that exist between the speaker and his or her audience 

> at the time the statement is made. /Descriptions are explanations that 

> the speaker and the audience take to be true for the purpose of 

> seeking further explanations/.[1] <#_ftn1>

--

☣ uǝlƃ

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe  <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003:  <http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/> http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC  <http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/> http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20191211/760d253f/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.emz
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 121058 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20191211/760d253f/attachment-0001.obj>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.png
Type: image/png
Size: 36578 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20191211/760d253f/attachment-0001.png>