[FRIAM] When are telic attributions appropriate in physical descriptions?

[glen]

To be clear, I don't think (and don't intend to accuse you of arguing in Bad Faith). I'm simply having trouble re-assembling your interleaved responses into a whole statement. If you actually cared, you'd do that work yourself. >8^D But it does take work... what's the old saying? If I had more time, I'd have written a shorter letter.

Re: 1) agential aspiration versus 2) calculation with an End as input - I don't intend to force a strict partial order, a chunking of time, iteration. But that would be adequate for my weak sense of (2). In my argument with Nick, I even suggested telicity type 2 might be simply an estimate for where one *might* end up (ala modal logic). For example, if an agent aspires to obtain state X, but then eventually obtains state Y (where X≠Y) such that the aspiration is (or "turns out to be") *false*, as long as |X-Y| approaches 0, that's good enough for type 2. But if |X-Y| will always be large (i.e. X≉Y, X is not even almost Y), then that's not good enough for type 2. It's merely type 1, the agent is guilty of "magical thinking".

Let's take many a lefty's admiration of the Law of Attraction. They put a picture of, say, a pallet of cash on their Vision Board and meditate on that picture day in and day out, maybe for several hours at a time, rather than actually go out and, say, learn some math so they can become a data scientist and earn some actual cash. They're gonna end up with far less cash. So their aspired-to state is very different from the final state that obtains. The Vision Board and picture of the pallet of cash are telic in the type 1 sense (aspirational), but not in the type 2 sense.


On 8/14/24 08:19, steve smith wrote:
> 
>> Your interleaving broke me. I can't tell if you have a coherent thing to say or if you're merely reacting shallowly to the things I've said. Maybe it's because I'm still sick from my last COVID infection and just can't think straight. But I can't coerce your interleaved responses into a coherent whole. Sorry.
> I appreciate that you try and that you are direct in acknowledging when you fail.  I am not in a good position to judge where the blame or remedy to this lies.   I know that my intention is not to "react shallowly" and I do know that I believe that what I am saying is at least *seeking coherence*.   In particular seeking a "mutual coherence" with what I think I hear you saying.  I think that is the point of dialogue, or maybe more pointedly "conversation"?  I am not trying to "prove a point" by any measure, but rather seeking what point might be self-evident from our contrasting perspectives on it?
>> But I can respond to the primary point I think I was making, which is that the disambiguation of the 2 conceptions of telicity (1 - agential aspiration vs. 2 - calculation where a final state is an input) 
> I think I understand 1) but am struggling with 2).   Are we talking about the "forward chaining" where the results of one intentional act becomes the input to the next turn of a telic engine-crank? The self-other scaffolding of co-evolution evolution?
>> relies on asking questions like "How personal is the calculation?" Is it merely about you, the agent? Or is it about something larger, like the system in which you (the agent) operate? If it's the latter, then telicity leans more my way (type 2). If it's the former, then it leans Nick's way (type 1).
> At risk of blurring away from the coherence I aspire to in this conversation, I'm lost as to why/how these must be distinct and not in an obvious way coupled?   Is it not the co-evolution of "the agent" and "the agent's context" which drives these systems forward?
>> The dissolution of self (however it's brought on - hallucinogens, ecstasy, beauty, etc) is one way to ensure we talk about type 2 telicity, rather than type 1. Individualism ("efficient markets", BDI agents, etc.) restricts telicity to type 1, whereas socialism (networks, fabrics, fields vs particles, etc) allows both, conflates the two.
> Maybe you are saying what I just tried to say above?   My intuition is that we are talking about the same thing in the same sense but with confoundingly complementary lexicons or idioms?
>> Those of us who are tricked by profundity seem to feel an urgency for self-dissolution. My guess is that's because they don't have a way to induce ecstasy in themselves, at will. Whether you develop a regimen of judicious drug use or can simply dive in and back out of deep bullshit like String Theory doesn't matter that much. All you need is some/any method by which to induce ecstasy in yourself. And if you have such a method, you won't be *desperate* for it. And if you're not thirsty in that way, you won't fall for profundity against your will.
> 
> On a good day (hour minute second), everything feels profound to me and I needn't focus on/be-drawn-to/generate anything more than what is "just there"...   if there is a bottom line for me in this conversation it is reinforcing this.
> 
> I am *drawn* to this list for the relative profundity (and deep bullshit as in string theory or more snarkily our "complexity babble") it offers me.  Even while the dragonflies perching on the tips of the reeds growing from the pond filled with fish and insects and myriad other bits of life dancing together can be plenty if I allow it.  Or the clouds scudding in the sky, bumping up against the Sangres, phase-changing into rain to wet the rock and vegetation and fill the streams, recharge the aquifers and acequias to overflow into the arroyos to irrigate the fields and surge my pond to ... ... ...
> 
> I am struggling (contentedly?) in this moment to understand your conception of telic, of how it relates to the ecstatic experience of profundity and the recursive (telic?) drive to generate yet-more (pseudo?) profundity.
> 
> FWIW, Jon and I sat out by that pond last week with young Tycho who contentedly moved a handul of dirtied mah-jong tiles around on a handmade table while the 'dolts spoke "of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—Of cabbages—and kings—And why the sea is boiling hot—And whether pigs have wings."
> 
> I am saddened that mutual coherence is so elusive... supporting your own repeated suggestion that "communication is illusory", but nevertheless ever-hopeful that "the illusion of communication" is in some fundamental sense real and is the magic dust of the coherence I seem to believe in?
> 


-- 
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