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

Nicholas Thompson thompnickson2 at gmail.com
Sun Jan 15 22:49:01 EST 2023 

EricS and Glen,

Sorry, again.  Here is the short version.  I apologize, again, for
appending that great wadge of gunk.

I found the second Feferman even harder to understand than the first. Glen,
can you give me a little help on what you meant by a languageless
language.

 Thanks, all



On Sun, Jan 15, 2023 at 4:09 PM Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Aw crap!  The shortish  answer that I meant to send had all sorts of junk
> appended!  Sorry. Will resend soon. [blush]
>
> Sent from my Dumb Phone
>
> On Jan 12, 2023, at 8:54 PM, 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!
>
> Nick
>
>
>
> Consider, for a moment, the role of placebos in medicine.
>
> Consider the ritual of transubstantiation.  At the moment that you sip it,
> is the contents of the chalice Really "blood."
>
> *Peirce writes, "Consider what effects, which may have practical bearing,
> the object of your conception to have.  Then our conception of those
> effects is our whole of our conception of the object.*
>
> "The Whole"?!  Really?  Now somebody of  Peircean Pursuasion would point
> out that, if a parishionner were to burst a blood vessel, and a doctor with
> a transfusion kit were present, NObody would conceive that the patient
> should b transfused with communion wine.  Since causing instant death upon
> tranfusion is not one of the conceivable consequences of the chalice
> containing blood (leave aside immunity issues ), and is a conceivable
> consequence of transfusing communion wine, we are warranted to say that,
> despite what the  practice of communion implies, the stuff in the challice
> is wine not blood.
>
> But it's entirely conceivable that some parissioners, at theinstant of
> communion, do conceive of the wine as blood, and experience changes of
> themselves and teh world around them as a consequence of receiving
> communion.
>
> Fork 1 here "The Whole"?!  Really? Consider the phenomenon of a
> _________________ effects.
>
> The juice here is what we think we are estimating.  Are we estimating the
> true state of affairs in some world we cannot more directly access or are
> we estimating the final resting place of the statistic we are measuring.
> My point, here, is that the latter is  all we have.  To the extent that
> anything in experience is non-random (ie, some events are predictive of
> other events), any mechanism that homes on these contingencies will be
> selected if the consequences are of importance to reproduction of the
> organism. we live in a mostly random world  and to the extent that our
> methods of inquiry are useful, further inquiry will probably narrow our
> estimate of some property within finer and finer limits.  This is a process
> I would call inductive.
>
> Now I think, in your latter comments, you are getting at the fact that
> this is only one kind of convergence,and is dependent on a prior
> convergence concerning what identifies a substance as lithium.  Before we
> can determine the boiling point of lithium we have first to agree upon
> which substances are lithium and which operations constitute "boiling".
> These are decisions that are abductive in nature, and, to that extent are
> less straight-forward.    Lets say we are interested in determining the
> boiling point of Li and we are sent looking for some li to biol.   We come
> accross a lump of grey metal witha dark finish in our lab drawer and we
> want ot know if this is lithium.   The logic here (light grey substance
> with dark finish =? lithiumisthe logic ofabduction.  That this first test
> is positive will lead you toperform yet another abductive lest: is it
> noticeably light when youbalance it in yourhadn, can you cut it withthe
> plasticknife you brought home with your take-out lunch , etc.  These tests
> are similarly abductive (Li is light, theis substance is light, this
> sjumbstance isli;Li is soft, this substance is soft, this substanve is Li.
> When enough of these tests have come up positive you will declare the
> substance to be Li an procede to measure its boiling point.  (A similar
> series of abductions willbe require to agree upon what constitutes
> "boiling".
>
> *Lithium* (from Greek <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_language>:
> λίθος, romanized <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanization_of_Greek>:
> *lithos*, lit. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literal_translation> 'stone')
> is a chemical element <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_element>
> with the symbol <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_(chemistry)> *Li*
> and atomic number <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_number> 3. It is
> a soft, silvery-white alkali metal
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkali_metal>. Under standard conditions
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_temperature_and_pressure>, it is
> the least dense metal and the least dense solid element. Like all alkali
> metals, lithium is highly reactive
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactivity_(chemistry)> and flammable, and
> must be stored in vacuum, inert atmosphere, or inert liquid such as
> purified kerosene or mineral oil. When cut, it exhibits a metallic luster
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luster_(mineralogy)>, but moist air
> corrodes <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrosion> it quickly to a dull
> silvery gray, then black tarnish. It never occurs freely in nature, but
> only in (usually ionic) compounds
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_compound>, such as pegmatitic
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegmatite> minerals, which were once the
> main source of lithium. Due to its solubility as an ion, it is present in
> ocean water and is commonly obtained from brines
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brine>. Lithium metal is isolated
> electrolytically <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis> from a
> mixture of lithium chloride
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_chloride> and potassium chloride
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_chloride>.
>
> On Sun, Jan 8, 2023 at 3:21 AM glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This smacks of Feferman's claim that "implicit in the acceptance of given
>> schemata is the acceptance of any meaningful substitution instances that
>> one may come to meet, but which those instances are is not determined by
>> restriction to a specific language fixed in advance." ... or in the
>> language of my youth, you reap what you sow.
>>
>> To Nick's credit (without any presumption that I know anything about
>> Peirce), he seems to be hunting the same unicorn Feferman's hunting,
>> something like a language-independent language. Or maybe something
>> analogous to a moment (cf
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_(mathematics))?
>>
>> While we're on the subject, Martin Davis died recently:
>> https://logicprogramming.org/2023/01/in-memoriam-martin-davis/ As terse
>> as he was with me when I complained about him leaving Tarski out of
>> "Engines of Logic", his loss will be felt, especially to us randos on the
>> internet.
>>
>> On 1/7/23 15:20, David Eric Smith wrote:
>> > Nick, the text renders.
>> >
>> > You use words in ways that I cannot parse.  Some of them seem very
>> poetic, suggesting that your intended meaning is different in its whole
>> cast from one I could try for.
>> >
>> > 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.
>> >
>> > When we come, however, to “states of knowledge” and “truth” as “what
>> will bear out in the long run”, in addition to the fact that we must study
>> the roles of these tokens in our thought and discourse, if we want to get
>> at the concepts expressive of their nature, we also have a hideously more
>> complicated structure to categorize, than mere sample estimators and the
>> corresponding “actual” values they are constructed to estimate.  For sample
>> estimation, in some sense, we know that the representation for the
>> estimator and the estimated is the same, and that they are both numbers in
>> some number system.  If we wish to discuss states of knowledge and truth,
>> everything is up for grabs: every convention for a word’s denotation and
>> all the rules for its use in a language that confer parts of its meaning.
>> All the conventions for procedures of observation and guided experience.
>> All the formal or informal modes of discourse in which we organize our
>> intersubjective experience pools and
>> > build something from them.  All of that is allowed to “fluctuate”, as
>> we would say in statistics of sample estimators.  The representation scheme
>> itself, and our capacities to perceive through it, are all things we seek
>> to bring into some convergence toward a “faithful representation” of “what
>> is the case”.
>> >
>> > Speaking or thinking in an orderly way about that seems to have many
>> technical as well as modal aspects.
>> >
>> > Best,
>> >
>> > Eric
>> >
>> >
>> >> On Jan 7, 2023, at 5:05 PM, Nicholas Thompson <thompnickson2 at gmail.com
>> <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> */The relation between the believed in and the True is the relation
>> between a limited function and its limit. {a vector, and the thing toward
>> which the vector points?]   Ultimately  the observations that the function
>> models determine/**/the limit, but the limit is not determined by any
>> particular  observation or group of observations.  Peirce believes that The
>> World -- if, in fact, it makes any sense to speak of a World independent of
>> the human experience -- is essentially random and, therefore,  that
>> contingencies among experiences that lead to valid expectations are rare.
>> The apparition of order that we experience is due to the fact that such
>> predictive contingencies--rare as they may be-- are extraordinarily useful
>> to organisms and so organisms are conditioned to attend  to them.  Random
>> events are beyond experience.  Order is what can be experienced. /*
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