Having developed your system, the only thing you seem to be able to do with it is find it in everything.
The Cosmos only appears to be solidly there because it is - in some literal sense - observing itself. It exists as a globalised matrix of constraints on undirected local possibility.
Now the rejoinder is obvious. Quantum mechanics doesn't account for human feelings.
But I made the argument there too. Semiotics originated in phenomenology. It is rooted in the mechanics of human intelligibility. So it doesn't exactly leave the phenomenal out of it. Instead it accepts the full Kantian force of that and then builds back out so as to recover the noumenal - rescuing it via this idea of a core relational structure that acconts for intelligibility itself.
I can see the vulnerability that creates. Yes, we are projecting a view of ourselves as rational beings on to the apparent rational structure we see in the world. That is quite a leap of faith.
However - pragmatism again - suck it and see. Leaps of faith become justified to the extent they appear to work. — apokrisis
there's no such thing as generic effectiveness — Srap Tasmaner
Example: father tells his son he needs to get a job; son goes out and robs a convenience store. When the father objects, the son's defence is that the whole point of getting a job was to get money, so he just got money a different way. Whatever the merits of that view, and they may be considerable, it cannot be said that he succeeded at getting a job. — Srap Tasmaner
So I'm wondering what task you have in mind when you reference this pragmatic sense of effectiveness, and whose task it is. Does this task belong to the "we" you reference, or to the cosmos? — Srap Tasmaner
On your version - when forced to provide an intelligible rationale of the context in play - the son says it is all about the least action path to get that money. Jobs and robbery are not meaningfully distinct ... despite social norms that exist because of a larger scale social effectiveness. In the son's view, the father's attempt to draw a distinction is a quite arbitrary one on his own personal scale of being. Jobs or robbery is being claimed as a difference that should make no difference. — apokrisis
Then the "we" that should apply in your example becomes the social norms in play. A son that robs convenience stores is far more likely to come from a family and neighbourhood that robs convenience stores. The choice of a least action path to a goal would not really need much further justification.
But given your scenario, the father would be asserting some larger social norm as the "we" with the view on what is effective for that "we". We are law abiding and employed as that is a desire embedded at a cultural level, representing whatever happens to be functionally effective as a generalised habit. — apokrisis
Whatever the merits of that view, and they may be considerable, it cannot be said that he succeeded at getting a job. — Srap Tasmaner
none of it is relevant to this single question: did the son follow a procedure that is effective in achieving the goal of getting a job. — Srap Tasmaner
...effectiveness at achieving the higher goal does not pass through to the lower. — Srap Tasmaner
The pattern here is similar: reinterpret the instruction to shelve everything as an instruction to leave nothing in the back. Reinterpret the instruction to get a job as an instruction to get money. — Srap Tasmaner
You've lost me. How could that have been the gist of your argument? — apokrisis
Whatever the merits of that view, and they may be considerable, it cannot be said that he succeeded at getting a job. — Srap Tasmaner
did the son follow a procedure that is effective in achieving the goal of getting a job. — Srap Tasmaner
My point was that effectiveness at achieving a goal at one level may not always count as effectiveness at achieving a goal on another level. — Srap Tasmaner
And the answer is "no", no matter what else we say about the situation. — Srap Tasmaner
It's a question about how exactly you attach the pragmatist appeal to the effectiveness of a procedure to the hierarchical/holistic/systems science analysis. — Srap Tasmaner
the strangeness of your scenario — apokrisis
But if the father's constraint was to find paid labour — apokrisis
You are relying on a highly artificial demarcation that seeks to stop us saying anything else about the situation. — apokrisis
So you are no longer content with the idea that substantial being is definitely both material cause and formal cause? — apokrisis
"Did you get a job?" is a yes-or-no question. Humans do highly artificial stuff. — Srap Tasmaner
Here's another: A wedding planner tells one of the staff to put a certain flower arrangement on the dining table, and the ice sculpture on another table. The staff person decides to swap the indicated locations "because it looks better this way." Be that as it may, and whether the event planner agrees, the staff person cannot be said to have done what they were told. — Srap Tasmaner
The idea that substantial being requires both matter and form is derived from a materialist bias. — Metaphysician Undercover
So in all your examples, there are laid out certain constraints - which presumably are meant to achieve some effective action. And yet the actions look to defy them. A "wrong" procedure is employed to reach the apparent goal. — apokrisis
The point was to show how the agent's judgment that what they did "works" could be faulty, unless some goal is taken as the goal relative to which a judgment of effectiveness is made. — Srap Tasmaner
If you want to judge what "works", you have to settle first what the goal is, and in many cases whose goal it is. — Srap Tasmaner
That is what I've been asking you to clarify. How your occasional appeals to a pragmatic "this, because it works" slot into your system. Works to do what? To study effectively or to get a good grade? And whose goals are we talking about? — Srap Tasmaner
I've said nature itself is irreducibly telic. There is always finality or a goal in play. — apokrisis
we are projecting a view of ourselves as rational beings on to the apparent rational structure we see in the world. That is quite a leap of faith.
However - pragmatism again - suck it and see. Leaps of faith become justified to the extent they appear to work. — apokrisis
Work to do what? — Srap Tasmaner
The only way to be integrated as a self is to understand the disintegrative forces at work. — apokrisis
Thousands of years ago, poetry and improv were at the heart of personal identity within a tribal social setting. They were the right technology for an oral tradition.
But thousands of years on and we are not in Kansas anymore. That is why I find them inauthentic if taken out of that tribal context and advanced as a viable modern mode of analysis. — apokrisis
What you did repeat was that any bid at abstract totalising must by its own lights fail to capture the wholeness of an actual world.
Well again, I made the arguments on that. [1] I agreed that modelling is modelling. [2] But then the larger Peircean story is that modelling constructs its own world. And so the actualised wholeness is itself an emergent from the core semiotic process that is the engine producing any reality. — apokrisis
You mean that the idea that it doesn't is derived from theistic necessity. — apokrisis
It is an article of faith that there are gods and souls, therefore Aristotle's hylomorphism must be scholastically rendered in a fashion that permits matter-less substantial form. — apokrisis
Materialism (or rather physicalism, if you accept hylomorphism) isn't a bias. It is a belief derived from rational theory and empirical evidence. — apokrisis
I agreed that modelling is modelling. But then the larger Peircean story is that modelling constructs its own world. And so the actualised wholeness is itself an emergent from the core semiotic process that is the engine producing any reality. — apokrisis
Pragmatism says "wrongness" is to be expected. The question then becomes whether the wrongness observed as the general is advanced to explain the particular is a case of signal or noise. Is there something significant not being explained? Or are all the inevitable exceptions to the rule just meaningless noise? — apokrisis
What I'm struggling to get across is the oddity of your position, and it's probably just the Peirce thing.
On the one hand, there is this sort of messianic quality to your system.... That doesn't look like the sort of instrumentalist version of pragmatism that this does: — Srap Tasmaner
In which case, the noise in our models is also signal, and what sense now can be given to "wrong"? If you put "wrongness" in scare-quotes, is this still pragmatism? — Srap Tasmaner
Why be an analyst, a scientist, a philosopher? How do we decide that it's better (for us) to accurately model existence with words than to blow on a saxophone and create an ecstasy without words? — syntax
Any philosophical theory, no matter how grand or successful, is still a mere conceptual piece of reality as a whole. It exists among toothaches, beautiful faces, and screams in the distance at night. It exists among other grand theories, equally plausible or implausible, at least until further investigation. — syntax
So (as you may well understand), it's not about opposing abstract thought to sensuality but rather about opposing abstract thought to the richness of an experience that includes all abstract thought, and not just that grand theory. — syntax
In the quote above, I don't see how [2] cancels [1]. Are you offering a model, a useful perspective? Or something more? Do you grant that theories are not life/existence itself? That all theories are 'smaller' than existence? — syntax
Well yes. I do what I do because it has extraordinary beauty for me. — apokrisis
It is about actually being able to see and feel this structure in the mind's eye, recognise its form in every encounter with the world. — apokrisis
You actually have to spend a long time building up that integrated picture that brings it fully alive. — apokrisis
I see life/existence as the world of mere appearances - at least in being the foreshortened subjective view of what it is to be me, some bag of flesh and prosaic needs, in some highly particular moment of the here and now. And then the Peircean theory is the map of the abstract or objective reality of which my immediate pressing existence is a tiny accidental shard. — apokrisis
But then what could really drive me? It is only that you can get to experience the wholeness of reality as it comes alive gradually as a living structure in your thoughts.
Isn't that what everyone seeks from metaphysics? And so, that makes the best metaphysics such a worthwhile journey. — apokrisis
'All theories are tools, including this one' is one flavor of that closure, and more traditional metaphysical visions is another. — syntax
And there could also be the most complete map possible map. The Map of Everything. — apokrisis
It is just like real maps - the kind you use to get around. — apokrisis
the simplest map just tells you where are the obstacles, where are the paths — apokrisis
In regards to the contrast between lived life and metaphysical maps, a map is created by abstracting away the accidental to arrive at the necessary.
So actual life is rich because it it rich with a history of accidents, fluctuations, contingencies and particulars. — apokrisis
But all theories are the same kind of tool - a map by which to navigate the territory. So while - like blind men feeling an elephant - that might result in many partial mappings, there is still that single territory being explored. — apokrisis
And there could also be the most complete map possible map. The Map of Everything. — apokrisis
So actual life is rich because it it rich with a history of accidents, fluctuations, contingencies and particulars. Chance and unpredictability are basic to actual existence. And inexplicable to the degree they are just accidents. — apokrisis
But then the other side of the coin is that Peircean semiotics is founded also on the growth of global habits, the emergence of structural-level necessity. Peirce called it the spontaneity of tychism vs the continuity of synechism. — apokrisis
It is just like real maps - the kind you use to get around. The metaphysics wants to boil away the unneeded detail. It wants to create a picture of the world that doesn't tell you what kind of trees grow on that there hill this year, or the colour of the front door that Mr Smith chose a few months back. Instead, the simplest map just tells you where are the obstacles, where are the paths. That is, where are the constraints, where are the degrees of freedom.
So to call a metaphysical model a tool is too general. There are many kinds of tools.
The kind of tool we are talking about here is a map. And maps are interested in the global structure of an environment, not its inessential details. — apokrisis
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