[FRIAM] Dope slaps, anyone? Text displaying correctly?

[glen]

Ouch. My bad. I meant Solomon Feferman: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Feferman

I've mentioned him so many times on the list, I ass/u/me/d everyone would know who I meant. I'll try to do better in the future.

On January 12, 2023 7:54:46 PM PST, Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>Dear EricS, Glen, and anybody else who is following.
>
>Thank you so much for pitching in.   As I have often said, I am incapable
>of thinking alone, so your comments are wonderfully welcome.  And thank you
>also for confirming that what I wrote was readable.  I am having to work in
>gmail at the moment, which is , to me, an unfamiliar medium.
>
>First, Eric:  I am trying to talk math-talk in this passage, so poetry is
>not an excuse if I fail to be understood by you.
>
>*FWIW: as I have heard these discussions over the years, to the extent that
>there is a productive analogy, I would say (unapologetically using my
>words, and not trying to quote his) that Peirce’s claimed relation between
>states of knowledge and truth (meaning, some fully-faithful representation
>of “what is the case”) is analogous to the relation of sample estimators in
>statistics to the quantity they are constructed to estimate. We don’t have
>any ontological problems understanding sample estimators and the quantities
>estimated, as both have status in the ordinary world of empirical things.
>In our ontology, they are peers in some sense, but they clearly play
>different roles and stand for different concepts.*
>
>I like very much what you have written here and think it states, perhaps
>more precisely than I managed, exactly what I was trying to say.  I do want
>to further  stress the fact that if a measurement system is tracking a
>variate that is going to stabilize in the very long run, then it will on
>average approximate that value with greater precision the more measures are
>taken.  Thus, not only does the vector of the convergence constitute
>evidence for the location of the truth, the fact that there is convergence
>is evidence that there is a truth to be located.   Thus I agree with you
>that the idea behind Peirce's notion of truth is the central limit theorem.
>
>Where  we might disagree is whether there is any meaning to truth beyond
>that central limit.  This is where I found you use of "ontology" so
>helpful. When talking about statistics, we are always talking about
>mathematical structures in experience and nothing beyond that.  We are
>assuredly talking about only one kind of thing.  However, I see you
>wondering, are there things to talk about beyond the statistical structures
>of experience?   I hear you wanting to say "yes" and I see me wanting to
>say "no".
>
>God knows ... and I use the term advisedly ... my hankering would seem  to
>be arrogant to the point of absurdity.  Given all the forms of discourse in
>which the words "truth" and "real" are used, all the myriad language games
>in which these words appear as tokens, how, on earth, could I (or Peirce)
>claim that there exists one and only one standard by which the truth of any
>proposition or the reality of any abject can be demonstrated?  I think I
>have to claim (and I think Peirce claims it) that whatever people may say
>about how they evaluate truth or reality claims, their evaluation always
>boils down to an appeal to the long run of experience.
>
>Our difference of opinion, if we have one, is perhaps  related to the
>difference of opinion between James and Peirce concerning the relation
>between truth as a believed thing and truth as a thing beyond the belief of
>any finite group of people.  James was a physician, and presumably knew a
>lot about the power of placebos.  He also was a ditherer, who famously took
>years to decide whom to marry  and agonized about it piteously to his
>siblings.  James was fascinated by the power of belief to make things true
>and the power of doubt to make them impossible.  Who could jump a chasm who
>did not believe that he could jump a chasm!   For Peirce, this sort of
>thinking was just empty psychologizing.  Truth was indeed a kind of
>opinion, but it was the final opinion, that opinion upon which the
>operation of scientific practices and logical inquiry would inevitably
>converge.
>
>EricC, the Jamesian, will no doubt have a lot to say about this, including
>that it is total garbage.
>
>As for Fefferman,  my brief attempt to learn enough about Fefferman to
>appear intelligent led me to the website,
>http://www.vipfaq.com/Charles%20Fefferman.html, which might be the weirdest
>website I have ever gone to.   I don't THINK that a language-free language
>is my unicorn, but Glen NEVER says something for nothing, so I am
>withholding judgement until he boxes my ears again.  I think my unicorn may
>be that all truth is statistical and, therefore, provisional.  Literally:
>a seeing into the future.
>
>Thanks again for helping out, you guys!
>