[FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

[Nick Thompson]

Frank, 

 

I can’t get in to see that paper!  Did you?  

 

Nick 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

 <http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:friam-bounces at redfish.com] On Behalf Of Frank Wimberly
Sent: Monday, January 07, 2019 8:02 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Motives - Was Abduction

 

For a classic example of layers or levels and their interactions see

 

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Hearsay-I-Speech-Understanding-System%3A-An-of-Reddy-Erman/04ffb20cbfa502d3d2611dcfe027cfa94b45a629

-----------------------------------
Frank Wimberly

My memoir:
https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly

My scientific publications:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2

Phone (505) 670-9918

 

On Mon, Jan 7, 2019, 7:02 AM ∄ uǝʃƃ <gepropella at gmail.com <mailto:gepropella at gmail.com>  wrote:

OK.  I'm sorry if I've pushed too hard.  But if what you say, here, can imply that motives are NOT just behaviors at a higher level of organization, then perhaps that's progress.

Because it seems to have traction, I'll stick with the tissue, cell, molecule set.  The reason I suggested you replace your "higher level" hierarchy with words describing a heterarchy, is because we (none of us) can pinpoint the tissue organizing logic [†].  While it's a useful fiction to suggest that tissue is cells organized at a higher level, we can *just as well* say tissue is organized by cellular behavior collectively.

So, in one hierarchy, we have {tissue <- cell <- molecules}.  But in another hierarchy, we have {cell <- tissue, cell <- molecules}.  If you set your email client to monospace:

   tissue
     |
   cells
     |
 molecules

versus:

     cells
     |  |
tissue  molecules

One of the definitions of "heterarchy" is that the components can be organized in multiple ways.  So, again, I apologize if my attempts are irritating.  But it *really* would help dorks like me parse what you're saying if you used words that allowed for more complete statements.  I've tried to suggest "layer" and "order" as a replacement for "level".  Some suggestions for replacing your statement about motives might be:

  Motives ARE behaviors, just dynamically mixed by the organism.
  Motives ARE behaviors, just organized to cohere.
  Motives ARE behaviors, just a heterarchy re-organizable to approach a goal.

I'd claim that each of those is more accurate and complete than "organized at a higher level".  To boot, they give your audience a much *better* hint at your "if you stand next to me, you will see what I see."  That's because each one of my rewordings directly implies an organizing agency.  Your "organized at a higher level" can be taken to be an ontological assertion ... that this hierarchy is ensconced in the universe and would be a feature of, say, silicon based life on Alpha Centauri.

All it takes is to stop relying on this higher- and lower-level fiction.


[†] Is it in the cells?  Is it in the genes? Is it an attractor that might obtain even if the cells were zero-intelligence agents?  I would argue that "it" is distributed across the whole set of components and relations ... further arguing that it's a heterarchy. But all we need to do for this discussion is admit that we don't really know and use words that give a more complete indication *that* we don't really know and need to study it further.


On 1/6/19 4:26 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> In the first instance, to a pragmatist, any statement that X is Thus, is
> incomplete.  So that statement, X is hierarchically organized, is just an
> incomplete statement.  So an argument about whether anything IS JUST
> hierarchically organized is a silly argument.  What is not a silly argument
> is that X is hierarchically organized for some purpose of from point of
> view, P.  So all attributions are three0valued, sign, object, interpretant.
> Is this relativism?  No, not in the ordinary sense.  Because the pragmatist
> asserts that if you stand next to me, you will see what I see.  Or, to put
> it less metaphorically, if you do the experiment you will get the result.
> So, if you take Eric or I to be saying that anything is one hundred present
> hierarchically organized all the time and in all respects, you take us
> wrong.   

-- 
∄ uǝʃƃ

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