[FRIAM] When are telic attributions appropriate in physical descriptions?
Stephen Guerin
stephen.guerin at simtable.com
Thu Aug 8 11:42:46 EDT 2024
On Thu, Aug 8, 2024, 7:44 AM glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
> No. I interact with the bullshit generators enough at work. I don't feel
> the need to do so in my personal life, as well. But I appreciate the
> invitation.
>
Glen, yes "bullshit generators" can be slightly annoying at times ;-p
Friam is a space to interact with them as I think they hold our collective
wisdom and sometimes generate profound insights that I never would have
considered on my own. <grin>
> On 8/7/24 19:25, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> > Hmmmm! I wonder how Glenn would react to our requesting him to play this
> game. I hate it because it depends so powerfully on the meanings of the
> words in the question but I love it because it gives me a number. And of
> course because of the company it puts me in. Who couldn’t enjoy a game that
> puts me in the same space as Ludvig Wittgenstein
> >
> > Glen, will you play? Just for kicks!
> >
> >
> >
> > {
> > "currentVector": {
> > "deterministic": 0.5,
> > "reductionism": 0.5,
> > "empiricism": 1,
> > "materialism": 1,
> > "teleology": 0.01
> > },
> > "closestPhilosophers": [
> > {
> > "name": "Daniel Dennett",
> > "cosineDistance": "0.04"
> > },
> > {
> > "name": "Werner Heisenberg",
> > "cosineDistance": "0.05"
> > },
> > {
> > "name": "David Hume",
> > "cosineDistance": "0.05"
> > },
> > {
> > "name": "Niels Bohr",
> > "cosineDistance": "0.05"
> > },
> > {
> > "name": "Ludwig Wittgenstein",
> > "cosineDistance": "0.05"
> > }
> > ]
> > }
> > Sent from my Dumb Phone
> >
> > On Aug 7, 2024, at 2:12 PM, Stephen Guerin <stephen.guerin at simtable.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Nick,
> >
> > How do we think about "Telos"? I can't help myself - "Dan wheel out our
> one-trick TensorPony" :-)
> >
> > Nick, this time you need to give us your tensor wrt to the philosophers
> and scientists that have discussed telos according to Dan so I can get a
> sense of where you are coming from. Copy and paste your result here. And
> then you can suggest other dimensions or questions to ask to modify the
> space.
> >
> > https://guerin.acequia.io/telosTensor.html <
> https://guerin.acequia.io/telosTensor.html>
> > <image.png>
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Dan picked these folks to establish the spanning set of the space.
> >
> >
> > Philosophers and Scientists on Telos
> >
> > *Aristotle:* Introduced the concept of telos, arguing that everything in
> nature has a purpose or goal it strives to achieve, which is fundamental to
> understanding natural processes.
> >
> > *David Bohm:* Proposed the theory of the implicate order, suggesting a
> deeper, orderly reality underlying apparent randomness, resonating with
> teleological thinking.
> >
> > *Ludwig Boltzmann:* Focused on statistical mechanics and the behavior of
> gases, emphasizing probabilistic interactions without invoking purpose.
> >
> > *Jean-Paul Sartre:* Proposed the existentialist view that life has no
> inherent meaning, and that individuals must create their own purpose,
> avoiding teleological explanations.
> >
> > *Michel Foucault:* Analyzed power, knowledge, and discourse, focusing on
> societal structures without invoking teleological explanations, instead
> emphasizing historical and social processes.
> >
> > *Richard Feynman:* Known for a pragmatic and non-teleological approach
> to physics, emphasizing mathematical descriptions of physical phenomena
> without resorting to purpose or goal-directed explanations.
> >
> > *Immanuel Kant:* Distinguished between appearances and the noumenal
> world, arguing that teleological judgments are heuristic and do not reflect
> the actual nature of reality.
> >
> > *Max Planck:* Believed in a fundamental consciousness underlying
> reality, stating that all matter originates and exists by virtue of a force
> governed by a conscious and intelligent mind, suggesting a teleological
> dimension.
> >
> > *Erwin Schrödinger:* Explored the fundamental order and purpose in
> living systems in his work, suggesting that physical laws govern biological
> processes with an underlying direction.
> >
> > *Daniel Dennett:* Rejected teleological explanations in favor of
> evolutionary and mechanistic accounts of consciousness and cognition.
> >
> > *Friedrich Nietzsche:* Rejected teleological explanations, emphasizing
> that life and the universe do not have inherent purposes or goals, and
> critiqued teleological views as human projections.
> >
> > *Roger Penrose:* Proposed ideas about the cyclical nature of the
> universe and the role of consciousness in quantum processes, hinting at a
> purposeful direction in both physical and mental realms.
> >
> > *Thomas Aquinas:* Integrated Aristotle's ideas into Christian theology,
> emphasizing that everything in nature has a purpose designed by God.
> >
> > *Albert Einstein:* Believed in an underlying order and simplicity in the
> universe, often speaking of the universe as comprehensible and governed by
> rational principles, which can imply a teleological perspective.
> >
> > *Ilya Prigogine:* His work on dissipative structures suggests that
> systems self-organize into ordered states, implying a form of goal-directed
> evolution toward complexity.
> >
> > *John Archibald Wheeler:* Suggested that observers play a role in
> bringing the universe into existence, hinting at a teleological aspect
> where the universe's structure is influenced by the presence of observers.
> >
> > *Karl Marx:* Rejected teleological views of history, emphasizing
> material conditions and class struggles as the drivers of historical change.
> >
> > *Stephen Guerin:* Explored the idea of autocatalytic processes in the
> universe's self-organization, indicating a teleological aspect to the
> evolution of complexity and structure.
> >
> > *Hans Jonas:* Argued that living organisms exhibit a fundamental
> purposiveness and that life itself has an inherent teleological nature.
> >
> > *Henri Poincaré:* Analyzed celestial mechanics and dynamical systems,
> focusing on deterministic chaos and system behavior without teleological
> implications.
> >
> > *James Clerk Maxwell:* Developed equations describing electromagnetic
> fields in a purely mathematical way, without implying any teleological
> purpose.
> >
> > *Jacques Derrida:* Emphasized the instability of meaning and critiqued
> metaphysical systems that impose teleological structures on language and
> thought.
> >
> > *John Archibald Wheeler:* Suggested that observers play a role in
> bringing the universe into existence, hinting at a teleological aspect
> where the universe's structure is influenced by the presence of observers.
> >
> > *Ludwig Wittgenstein:* Focused on the use of language and meaning
> derived from its context, avoiding metaphysical explanations that imply
> purpose or goal-directedness.
> >
> > *Niels Bohr:* Emphasized probabilistic outcomes in quantum mechanics,
> grounded in empirical observations and avoiding teleological
> interpretations.
> >
> > *Paul Dirac:* Developed quantum mechanics and quantum field theory with
> a focus on mathematical formalisms, describing particle behavior without
> implying purpose.
> >
> > *Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:* Proposed an evolutionary teleology where
> the universe and life progress toward greater complexity and consciousness,
> culminating in the Omega Point.
> >
> > *Richard Feynman:* Developed the path integral formulation, suggesting
> that the universe selects the path that minimizes action, which can be seen
> as a mathematical form of goal-directed behavior.
> >
> > *Stuart Kauffman:* Proposed that the universe and life self-organize
> through autocatalytic processes, indicating a teleological aspect to the
> development of complexity and order.
> >
> > *Thomas Aquinas:* Integrated Aristotle's ideas into Christian theology,
> emphasizing that everything in nature has a purpose designed by God.
> >
> > *Werner Heisenberg:* Described fundamental limits on measurement and
> predictability through the uncertainty principle, avoiding any notion of
> purpose in physical systems.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Here's my result copied using the "copy my Elos Tensor" button on the
> page showing the closest philosopher/scientists to me, according to Dan.
> >
> > <image.png>
> >
> > {
> > "currentVector": {
> > "deterministic": 0.1,
> > "reductionism": 0.1,
> > "empiricism": 0.1,
> > "materialism": 0.1,
> > "teleology": 1
> > },
> > "closestPhilosophers": [
> > {
> > "name": "Stephen Guerin",
> > "cosineDistance": "0.00"
> > },
> > {
> > "name": "Aristotle",
> > "cosineDistance": "0.23"
> > },
> > {
> > "name": "Plato",
> > "cosineDistance": "0.25"
> > },
> > {
> > "name": "David Bohm",
> > "cosineDistance": "0.30"
> > },
> > {
> > "name": "Ilya Prigogine",
> > "cosineDistance": "0.32"
> > }
> > ]
> > }
> >
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 6, 2024 at 3:09 PM Nicholas Thompson <
> thompnickson2 at gmail.com <mailto:thompnickson2 at gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> > Dear Phellow Phriammers,
> >
> > Ever since the days of Hywel White (GRHS) I have puzzled over the
> fact that telic language so often appears in physics discussions. I used
> to tease Hywel that Psychology must be the Mother of Physics, because he
> had to use psychological terms to describe the motion of particles. More
> recently, I have the same sort of discussions with Stephen Guerin who wants
> to use telic language concerning the path of photons and least action. (I
> hope I have this right, Stephen). You all have been tempted to think I am
> just trolling, but I don't think I am. I think there may be places where
> such descriptions are appropriate. I do think, for instance, that the
> relation between the first derivative of a function and any point in that
> function is analogous to the relation between the motivation of a behavior
> and the behavior itself.
> >
> > i am back to weather again, after a vacation from it for my
> obsession with unsuccessful vegetable gardening. Here is a quote from an
> Atmospheric Dynamics text which is laying out the Coriolis Force.
> >
> > *What happens if we consider the hockey puck moving equator-ward
> relative to the rotation of the Earth. In the absence of applied forces it
> /must/ conserve angular momentum. Upon being pulled equator-ward in the
> northern hemisphere the radius of rotation of the puck begins to
> increase.Consequently, an anti-rotational relative motion/develops/ /in
> order to/ conserve angular momentum, /[Italics by NST/] *
> >
> > In the view of folks on this list, is this an appropriate use of
> telic language, and why or why not? Stephen has a defensible argument in
> favor of it's appropriateness, the only such argument I have ever heard. (
> I don[t buy the premises, but the argument is sound) I am wondering about
> the rest of you.
> >
>
>
> --
> ꙮ Mɥǝu ǝlǝdɥɐuʇs ɟᴉƃɥʇ' ʇɥǝ ƃɹɐss snɟɟǝɹs˙ ꙮ
>
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