[FRIAM] The epiphenomenality relation

[Eric Charles]

Hmm..... not sure where to go with Glen & Steve's responses.....

"we can't reverse engineer a builder's intention from the artifact."

Well.... but we can attempt to... with the same limitations as attempts to
understand anything else. Like, if all we do is go around slinging
Descarte-styled "Yeah, but are you SURE!" after literally every statement
anyone ever makes, that might be a good hobby, but it doesn't really get
you anywhere. We can certainly use systematic ways to probe the systems
based on various hypotheses, and thereby increase our confidence.... just
like trying to figure out anything else in the world.

"All models are wrong (though some may be useful)."

That's just a weird linguistic game, right? A model is a model, not the
thing being modeled. True enough, and worth reminding people of every so
often. But that doesn't mean it is "wrong" as a model. A model is RIGHT if
it accurately captures the INTENDED aspects of the target phenomenon...
because that's what being a good model entails.

So, we COULD, potentially, accurately know a builder's intentions after
sufficient examination of an artifact or set of artifacts. Also, we could
be wrong. And our internal model of the builder isn't actually the builder,
but that doesn't necessarily mean our model is wrong, as a model.



On Thu, Dec 2, 2021 at 11:21 AM Steve Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

> EricC/Glen -
>
>
> I'm glad we agree. I made the same points here:
> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2021-November/090981.htmlhttps://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2021-November/090983.html
>
> To reiterate, we can't reverse engineer a builder's intention from the artifact.
>
> We can't mind read (even our own).
>
>  To go even further, we can't even do a *complete* job of characterizing the aspects of a thing, the aspects of environments, or the relations between them.
>
> All models are wrong (though some may be useful).
>
>  Parallax is needed across all scales and in both directions. Polyphenism is parallax on the thing. Robustness is parallax on the environment. And counterfactuals are parallax on their coupling.
>
> All systems (existing within the same light-cone) are "nearly
> decomposable" ?
>
>     Herb Simon Sez: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1909285
>
> One of the attractive qualities of modal realism is that it addresses both consistency (through concrete possible worlds) and completeness (through counterpart theory) in positing and testing various models. The problem becomes one of discovering which world you inhabit *from the data*, not from whatever abstracted models you may prefer.
>
> Lewis's Modal Realism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism> is a
> new one on me, but very interesting framing.   Only skimming the Wikipedia
> Article on the topic leaves me with only enough information to be
> dangerous...  so I am refraining from rattling on about all of my reactions
> to it's implications (for me) and in particular some of the objections
> listed there to his theory.  From this thin introduction I think I find
> Yagasawa's extension of possible worlds being distributed on a modal
> dimension rather than isolated space-time structures (yet) more
> compelling/useful?
>
> And what would Candide <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildungsroman> have
> to say about this?
>
>
>
> On 12/1/21 6:35 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
>
> Me -> We've imputed in all cases. Certainly we can assume artificial systems were designed for a purpose, but we still don't know what that purpose is without imputing a model onto that system. And, in both cases, we could proceed to experiment with the system, in order to test the predictions of the imputed model and increase our confidence that we have imputed correctly. The ability to do these things does not distinguish between the two types of system. There are long and respected scientific traditions using experimental methods to gain confidence in our understanding of why certain systems were favored by natural selection, i.e., to determine the manner in which they help the organism better fit its environment.
>
> Me -> Well.... it might be reification in some sense, but that term usually implies inaccuracy, which we cannot know in this case without experimentation. Even with a system we designed ourselves, where we might have a lot of insight into why we designed the system the way we did, we certainly don't have perfect knowledge. All we have there is a model of our own behavior to impute off of. Once again, this doesn't clearly differentiate the two situations. In all of these situations it is a mistake to uncritically reify our initial intuitions about the system's purpose.
>
>
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