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Author
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Topic: Cosmogony, Holography and Causality
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Christopher M. Langan
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Member # 264
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posted 12. October 2003 20:42
OK, gedanken - here you go. "If event A has happened, then event not-A cannot have happened in the same place at the same time." Not specific enough? Then try this: "The sun rose in the east this morning. It follows that it did not rise in the west."
Now, despite the fact that these examples meet your stated criterion - they are instances of the self-consistency of reality, i.e. its obedience to 2-valued logic - you'll probably maintain that they're trivial, nothing you didn't already know. But if you already knew about them, then why are you so intent on questioning the underlying logic? After all, in order to observe any such fact to be false, you'd need to do more than just talk about Many Worlds; you'd need to split yourself into gedanken 1 and gedanken 2 and observe the contradictory events in different universes. (The problem, of course, is reporting back to yourself afterwards.)
Not to be repetitive, but some of the more nontrivial implications of this situation are discussed that PCID paper you seem so intent on dismissing.
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gedanken
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posted 12. October 2003 23:29
quote:
OK, gedanken - here you go. "If event A has happened, then event not-A cannot have happened in the same place at the same time." Not specific enough? Then try this: "The sun rose in the east this morning. It follows that it did not rise in the west."
Of course I dismiss the relevance of the first, as it was not a “real-world” event of any particular so that we can examine it in any specific way toward the interest I propose.
Now on the second, more “specific” one, quite sufficient! Of course we have some obvious problems with this in the sense that the Sun does not actually “rise” in the East, rather it appears on the horizon in the East as we rotate toward it. Now that is not really germane to our issue in any directly significant way. Except that there are elements that bear study.
It is that difference between “rise” and appear on the horizon that could be quite significant. For example to what degree is the term “East” meaningful? Is this a clear cut distinction? Since we clearly must be discussing the sun’s appearance on the “Eastern” horizon, let’s consider that further.
How about an encampment on the North Poll? Actually, not exactly on the rotational pole, but some short distance South. (Of course “South” has little to determine a direction, since at that point all directions are “South”, but choose any of the multitude it will work equally well.) So let’s observe our Sun arising on the horizon. Oops, it was winter, so we have a long wait, but we are scientists, we are patient.
And we see a small shimmer in the “East”. (Note we are no longer on the true “North” pole, so “East” is more well defined at our position. There could be some uncertainty, particularly if we were close enough for wobble of the Earth’s rotation to move the strictly rotational pole around on us during our measurement process, thus making “East” a less well defined term that we originally thought.)
But let’s get back to this by assuming that we feel a fair degree of clarity in which direction “East” actually is at the moment of the measurement. We see the Sun’s glow appearing vaguely above the horizon, and indeed it appears to be in the “East”! So we wait.
Now what is “morning”? Is it a 24 hour day, or is it the time from Sun appearing on the horizon until it pass back across the horizon? This is not of great concern, because we have an even greater concern as we watch for the first 24 hours.
That is that the sun appears to vary up and down in its apparent brightness as it goes around the horizon in a somewhat erratic manner. That brightness, or degree of appearance above the horizon seems to depend greatly on the terrain of that very horizon, and that terrain it not completely even as the Earth is not perfectly spherical. So in our measurement we are not clear if the actual “arising” of the Sun was actually in the East, or the South, or the West, or even the North, as it seems to have had degrees of arising in each of those positions. That same declaration of an Easterly arising seems to have been just about equally met with a Southerly, Northerly, and Westerly arising in that 24 hour period.
And notice that these are not issues of probability, as it was not a matter whether the event we were observing had actually occurred with a lack of certainty which had a frequentist delineation. Rather it was to a significant degree a definitional problem that we had no definition that actually agreed with the real world that we could use in our circumstance in a reliable manner to resolve the issues. The one was actually a failure of our human methodology of understanding to meet with the real-world situation with complete unambiguity or certainty.
But we must deal with the “same time” issue, because it was present in Mr. Langan’s original statement, however. So what was the “time” of the arising? Since the arising was a very slow process, as it scanned the horizon, we do not have a precise “instant” at which an “arising” was determinable. And indeed if we think that the issue of what direction “East” actually was had a degree of crispness, we are still lacking crispness of “arising”. Since the “arising” clearly covers an extended period of time, what is meant by the “same time?” If that was of extension of the event of “rising”, that “same time” could extend to many dozens of hours and multiple rotations of the Earth. We have not resolved the issue crisply.
Now given a choosing of what “East” means, we don’t simultaneously (in short times of seconds, for example) see the Sun in both East and West. But wait, was “East” limited to 45 degrees N and S of the East axis? Or did “East” simply refer to the semicircle on our tangential plane, divided by the N/S axis? In that case we still have a problem, as “arising” is not well defined, and seems to be met at a point close to the “South” axis in which the division of “East” and “West” by that means was unclear. So even there we have not resolved the issues of fuzziness, and excluded middle.
Now of course we could (if our orientation of “North” were well defined) consider “East” to mean a quarter circle of arc evenly divides along the Easterly axis of our tangential plane. Then we divide the events of Sun Arising into four cases, arising in East, South, North, and West. Do we have a clearly excluded middle, since we must transition from East to South, then from South to West, etc, and the transition seems to exclude East-West as simultaneous. But of course as we move closer to the true “rotational” North pole, the whole definition of “North” and establishing of our axis can have sufficient error to allow for more than 90 degree error, thus making a form of overlap of East and West possible.
But I am willing to accept that we have a fairly well excluded middle, after all our refinements. Just we don’t have a clearly defined border between Easterly arising and Southerly arising, when we are talking about the continuous “arising” at the present moment of a few seconds duration, without considering at the moment that we have a clearly defined completion of the “arising” event.
While I am willing to accept a fairly well defined excluded middle, you can see the lack of complete clarity possible, that having the excluded middle is far from a natural necessity. In fact it seems to be most certain when we stop requiring that “excluded middle” to be a property of the real world, and make it a mental fiction.
So let’s extend the problem further:
"The Sun appeared to arise above the horizon in the East this morning from our view from the Equator. It follows that it did not appear to arise in the West at that same moment that we considered to be ‘morning’."
Of course this makes things more clear. But that really only pushes the fuzziness issues away to different levels. How did we know that we really were on the Equator? Was it actually the Sun? Which direction is East? (Is East according to our compass? But there was magnetic interference, our measurement of “East” had lack of clarity). No matter how you “spin” it, there are lack of clarity issues somewhere in our experience. There is no necessity that the “logic” chosen will meet the situation.
Another issue is that Mr. Langan has chosen only to discuss a very simple aspect of a very simple situation. Only the excluded middle aspect of some particular “logic” was brought up. (Clearly that particular “logic” must have been a “crisp” logic and not a “fuzzy” logic, or else the excluded middle would not even be an initial assumption.) Real situations of real-world events and constructs, under real uses of complex analysis introduce an explosion of such concerns. The more complex the situation, the more various aspects are brought in to attempt connections, the more that combinatorial explosion of the real-world aspects can intervene.
But we are not done with problems. Where is the implication one of “logic” in the first place? It was not a “logic” statement at all. “It follows that it did not rise in the west”, or “It follows that it did not appear to arise in the West at that same moment that we considered to be ‘morning’ “ are not implications from logic. The “It follows” statement is not something that comes from what was presented. What if coming up in the “East” and “West” simultaneously were natural? For the implication to be one of “logic”, the rest of the premises must be present. Try:
"The Sun appeared to arise above the horizon in the East this morning from our view from the Equator. The Sun cannot simultaneously appear to arise above the horizon in the East and the West in the same morning. It follows that it did not appear to arise in the West at that same moment that we considered to be ‘morning’."
That’s closer, but not exactly a strict “logic” statement. But then of course we have gotten away from issues of the real world, as the only statements of the real world were the two premises. The degree of truth of the first two premises are aspects from our experience (subject to matters of degree as pointed out above), but the concluding statement comes from some logic rather than directly from our experience. We could then measure by experience whether that particular “logic” was useful, by ascertaining if in fact we don’t have the sun appearing to arise in the West when it also appears to arise in the East. We could do so by observing many mornings to see if our concept of “logic” held to our real-world experience.
[ 13. October 2003, 00:10: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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chimp
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posted 13. October 2003 00:02
quote:
gedankin:
But I am willing to accept that we have a fairly well excluded middle, after all our refinements. Just we don’t have a clearly defined border between Easterly arising and Southerly arising, when we are talking about the continuous “arising” at the present moment of a few seconds duration, without considering at the moment that we have a clearly defined completion of the “arising” event.
While I am willing to accept a fairly well defined excluded middle, you can see the lack of complete clarity possible, that having the excluded middle is far from a natural necessity. In fact it seems to be most certain when we stop requiring that “excluded middle” to be a property of the real world, and make it a mental fiction.
For any one observer, the earth cannot be rotating in opposite directions, simultaneously.
How can the law of excluded middle be a mental fiction in this case gedankin? Too many thought experiments? ![[Wink]](wink.gif)
Of course, things are different at the quantum scale, where particles can have bizzare properties. Yet those properties are interpreted within a mathematical framework, based on the concept of true or false.
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gedanken
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posted 13. October 2003 00:13
quote:
For any one observer, the earth cannot be rotating in opposite directions, simultaneously.
Since the lack of clarity I posed was one of determining the 'Easterly' direction in that case, how is the issue of direction of motion of the Earth's rotation relevant? Sure it could have been a "setting" rather than an "arising", but what is the relevance of that?
--[edit ]
Sorry, Russell, I misunderstood initially.
Question is about direction of rotation, can’t be both one way and another way. But first of all, to have it in differing ‘ways’ we must be considering that rotation can vary. So let’s vary. We pass through rotation “clockwize” at high angular velocity, down to zero rotation, then to rotation “counterclockwise” (form a certain viewpoint.) What is that viewpoint? Any lack of clarity in which end is being viewed reverses the rotation. And as angular velocity passes through zero, the issue becomes fuzzy. If we must measure the angular velocity, our measurement may be of uncertainty in ways that cannot be adjudicated, simply because zero is an option and noise crosses the zero condition.
(And of course, are we specifying rotation with respect to our own reference frame? If we are on earth, with a ball and it is aligned with our considered axis along North/South axis, is a ball held in position rotating? That depends on whether we take an inertial reference frame, or our Earth surface reference frame. From the truly “inertial” frame, the fast held ball is rotating the same as the Earth. And of course higher order physics could apply to introduce even more complex considerations. All that with no QM whatsoever! All macroscale issues.)
And if we are discussing a sphere’s rotation along an axis, do we have to make our measurement precisely along the axis of rotation or does it still count if we are in error in our alignment. In that case we can have off-axis meaningful measurement of rotation. So how far off-axis. Up to 90 degrees off axis we have one direction, as we pass 90 rotation appears to reverse, and even for high speed rotation as we are exactly 90 degrees off axis it becomes meaningless measurement.
The complexity of real-world issues makes complete clarity difficult, and that is inherent, even in this issue.
quote:
Of course, things are different at the quantum scale, where particles can have bizzare properties. Yet those properties are interpreted within a mathematical framework, based on the concept of true or false.
First Russel answers his own question. Then he demonstrates that the concepts used are based on other concepts from the mental processes. We have not gotten beyond the (highly) “useful fiction” by compounding those useful fictions learned from our experience. The (concept) is based on a (concept). Indeed it is.
--
But since this brings up the issue of “perception” in some manner, let me relate something of some interest.
Upon rare occasions, I suffer from a condition known as an “ophthalmic migraine”. In that condition I loose vision in a certain region, for the most part to the right and somewhat down, in both eyes. It is a mental condition, and related to a “migraine headache”, except with no pain but rather an influence on the part of the brain involved in vision.
So one day I was riding (thankfully not driving) and looked up and there were no cars parked on the right side of the street we were traveling down. Then I turned my head and the street was filled with parked cars!
Usually there are telltale signs of that condition, and indeed later those telltale signs did occur, but at that moment I first looked there was nothing seeming in error in the street being empty of parked cars. What is most important is that the mind or brain has a way of filling in the missing parts of the experience. I did not experience a lack of proper perception of the right side of the street. It seemed perfectly normal. This is no more odd than the normal “blind spot” that everyone has in their vision—wherein nothing seems to be missing just that one simply cannot see an objet directly in the “blind spot”.
(Don’t concern, these are extremely rare and of short duration—more fascinating for their implications of thought process than of concern for me.)
Now Mr. Langan has of course discussed the issue of imperfection of knowledge and experience, that is recognized and he is attempting going beyond that issue. And scientific method is extremely important at compensating for errors of our experience by careful examination so to as best as possible eliminate those errors. (And of course clear use of logic is very important in that process.) But my point is that one cannot take that too far. The world does not really “look” like our perception. Green trees are not the same to other perceivers who work with differing senses (like other animals with differing vision systems). Even within humans we differ in many ways, such as color blindness just as a regularly occurring example. And of course, the Sun does not “rise” in the East, rather we turn so as to meet the Sun’s exposure in the East.
In the previous section on “rotation”, this relates in that it is mental processes that categorize the experiences. The actual “rotation” is not the same as our experience or categorization of that experience.
Let me close with a repetition of Rex’s point:
quote:
Our experience of the world shows it to be categorizable but imprecisely so. CTMU seems to take great notice of the former but little of the latter.
[ 13. October 2003, 01:08: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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chimp
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posted 13. October 2003 01:14
If I understand you correctly gedankin, a theory is a fiction, albeit a useful fiction, that helps to codify the observations we make, and better theories are always on the methodological horizon.
If theories continue to improve, will they approach a type of asymptotic limit? A correspondence that agrees with extreme accuracy?
What is at this limit?
Can theories be used to tell us about the limits of ...theories?
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Christopher M. Langan
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posted 13. October 2003 01:40
What is this, gedanken - "Fun With Semantics" time?
Let's try this again. Picture yourself standing outside just before dawn wherever it is you happen to be and seeing the sun travel upward from the horizon. To describe this observational event, you must define your terms with respect to a model. Once you construct a model and formulate your description accordingly, you can formulate a negative description. Your model carries this negative description and its negative truth value into the corresponding negative perception, which can thus be ruled out. Why? Because the logical negation functor works equally well in the languages of description and perception. If not, then forget about making and describing observations, because you'll never get to first base.
Suppose that in order to wriggle out of this reasoning, you make good on your threat to trudge up to the north pole and hole up in a snowdrift until the arctic winter creeps over you like an icy sunless hell and turns you into a popsicle. Nevertheless, when the sun finally makes it above the horizon and thaws out your peepers, you will again be able observe the event, construct a model, define your terms, describe your observation, negate your description, and rest assured that the result does not describe what you perceived.
Perhaps you mean to assert that no matter how hard we try, we are unable to formulate accurate models and descriptions. But in that case, we need merely restrict consideration to raw perception and realize that making an observation immediately rules out any inconsistent observation.
[ 13. October 2003, 01:42: Message edited by: Christopher M. Langan ]
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gedanken
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posted 13. October 2003 01:53
quote:
If theories continue to improve, will they approach a type of asymptotic limit? A correspondence that agrees with extreme accuracy?
Very good point, Russell. I was waiting for that point. I shall stay up a little longer (though at some hazard) to discuss this.
Consider the “theory” (theories) of classical mechanics. This has very good agreement with observation. But not universal agreement—we wind up with QM, relativity, and higher order theories.
Now there is a question of whether there is an “ultimate theory”. Can we discover a so-called “theory of everything”?
I do not of course know the answer to whether there is a final simple and all-encompassing theory of physics which will not break down into a need for a yet more-encompassing theory. If we were to use a simple induction from past experience, then the answer would be “no”, By that I don’t mean that we are not refining, rather that the point of refinement may not be one that can be describable or understandable by a human. It may require an infinite regress of further details.
But let’s grant for a moment that physics might actually achieve that “holy grail”. Even in that case I do not grant Mr. Langan’s point wherein we disagree. That theory of physics would only be a theory of a certain kind of detail of relationships of the working of the world. We already know that we could never know the full details of a given situation, even if such a fully-correct theory were known, simply because we would still have quantum effects preventing a full knowledge of all the details simultaneously in a small contained region. But now simply expand the region—even if complete knowledge were possible in that small contained region. We still always wind up with layers of complexity wherein there is more to know about the world and the relationships known are not sufficient for dealing with the more complex situation.
For example the “theory of everything” of physics would still not explain biological complexity. That takes an outward macroscopic theory or understanding, rather than a microscopic refinement.
(Now I would point out that I am bringing up aspects that are discussed in Mr. Langan’s paper in some regard or manner. I have said clearly that I do not disagree with all of the methods or conclusions, only certain aspects.)
But the point is that the lack of clarity issues I am discussing expand in macroscale examination such that our lack of clarity in descriptions remains inherent, even if we understand an art of applying and predicting events in relationships of physics, even so far as a completed “theory of everything”. (Of course the “TOE” really is not what is called!)
I think that point I brought up earlier is significant:
“A hologram cannot image itself!”
The lack of clarity will most likely remain forever in my opinion. Of significance here is that understanding relationships within the world does not imply an understanding of the world, wherein “of” is a meaning of completeness. Since there will forever be that left out, that left out can impinge in a combinatorially exploding manner. The convergence is still only in highly controlled circumstances in which that which is found most accurately vanishes to the smallest region of application.
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gedanken
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posted 13. October 2003 02:06
quote:
Perhaps you mean to assert that no matter how hard we try, we are unable to formulate accurate models and descriptions. But in that case, we need merely restrict consideration to raw perception and realize that making an observation immediately rules out any inconsistent observation.
Since Mr. Langan basically dealt in some small measure with other levels (and it is late), I’ll comment on this.
When we are left with only “raw perception” we are also left with the greatest uncertanty. We already know how unreliable “raw perception” can be. (Just read my example perception story from above. I thought it might be off topic and of little significance, but seems quite relevant to “raw perception”.) Logic indeed is useful in processing that “perception”. And indeed we can process that perception “syntactically” so as to improve on it. None of these points do I deny. It is the combined totality, supposedly spiraling to a completeness that is claimed to imply a “syntactic” nature of nature that is inherent, that I disagree with.
Once again, Rex’s point:
quote:
Our experience of the world shows it to be categorizable but imprecisely so. CTMU seems to take great notice of the former but little of the latter.
And Mr. Langan said:
quote:
What is this, gedanken - "Fun With Semantics" time?
Interesting that you should bring that up. For the difference between “syntax” and “semantics” is of significance. So far I get the impression of an unwarranted conflation.
What is “categorization”? A model of categorization might be a mapping of semantics to symbolics. (Wherein “syntax” is a feature of symbolic activity). The issue here includes the initial failure for reliable or consistently refineable mapping from symbol to semantics (or reverse mapping).
Remember that the brain processes perceptive input using “neural-network” like processes. Those inherently implement something resembling “fuzzy logic” attributes. The fuzziness of perception inheres.
[ 13. October 2003, 02:34: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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Christopher M. Langan
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posted 13. October 2003 02:33
Gedanken says that raw perception entails maximum uncertainty and unreliability. Since physical reality is perceptual, this amounts to saying that physical reality itself is unreliable, a scientifically meaningless assertion. Scientific observation is anything but imprecise; experiments are generally undertaken with very precise instruments and duly replicated by other experimenters, something which could not happen if gedanken's notions about reality were correct. (By the way, regarding that of which my theory does or does not take notice, I'll be the judge. When it comes to the CTMU, the accuracy displayed by Rex and gedanken is limited to what they actually understand of it. Unfortunately, that's not much.)
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gedanken
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posted 13. October 2003 02:40
Mr. Langan, my point is about individual raw perception, and I do not imply “maximal” rather high or likely “unreliability”. (This of course is highly variable, thus hardly “maximal”! All hyperbole need not be taken literally.) Of course we combine individual perceptions to refine. And it is of course also all we have to work with. (And we also do so with syntactic processes, since we are creatures of language. That in itself gives rise to the various “logics” as a human processes, as opposed to one of nature per se.)
Furthermore scientific study is one in which we continually massage our methods to deal with the vagaries of “raw perception” as much as possible. Almost any individual “scientific” measurement is far from a “raw perception” (and thus often of greater reliability), precisely because of the time and multiple perceptions used in feedback loops involving the human, in which aggregate information gained from individual perceptions are combined in varying ways to improve the reliability of the measurement.
In fact the very repetition in the scientific method is part of that attempt to deal with the vagaries of “raw perception”.
quote:
Scientific observation is anything but imprecise.
But then of course precision is a highly analyzed quantity of all scientific measurement, precisely because all measurement is distinctly imprecise. Are not “error bars” almost standard features of numeric measurement presentations? This is precisely a demonstration of (an edited version of) Rex’s point:
quote:
Our experience of the world shows it to be categorizable but imprecisely so. [Mr. Langan] seems to take great notice of the former but little of the latter.
[ 13. October 2003, 03:00: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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Christopher M. Langan
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posted 13. October 2003 03:07
Gedanken: "When we are left with only raw perception, we are also left with the greatest uncertanty." [My italics; note that "greatest" means "maximal".]
Gedanken, a few short minutes later: "This of course is highly variable, thus hardly 'maximal'"!
Whatever you say, gedanken! (I guess this is what happens when logic and precision go bye-bye.) But please be a gentleman and stop parroting Rex Kerr's half-baked comment regarding the CTMU. The CTMU associates precision and stability with SCSPL syntax, allowing for imprecision on the semantic and interpretative levels of reference. I don't expect you to know what this means, but I don't expect you to pretend that you do either.
Now weren't you going to bed or something?
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gedanken
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posted 13. October 2003 04:13
Fine, but I originally posed that the logics were imprecise. That seemed of importance, or else Mr. Langan would not have bitten off on a long exchange.
Within, Mr. Langan takes a bit of hyperbole as literal.
But in a sense that was a fully correct statement. For example if one is averaging measurements from “raw perception” around a central mean which is somehow the “real value”, then the individual measurements are the cases of maximal imprecision (or uncertainty), and the massaged (as by averaging) of the perceptions is of greater precision or certainty. Often the repeated application of perception can lead to better or more precise understanding of reality. But of course in being more “precise” the point applies to the individuals, as mentioned, in that some individual measurements might be closer to the mean, while others are more extreme. Thus only the furthest individual is “maximal” in extremity.
And then of course a sequence of perceptions can also lead to projection that takes us away from correct understanding (such as might be possible). In that sense, Mr. Langan is correct to challenge my hyperbole (which was meant mainly to be taken in the former kind of case—the one for which scientific method would generally prove useful.) In that case, the projection from a sequence of errant perceptions could take one to a greater extreme of conclusion – correctly identified as more extreme than the individual perceptions and thus those perceptions were not “maximal”.
But all that seems to have gotten away form the point, which is that the “fuzziness” of perception in terms of correspondence to reality can still be of great extremity in the individual perception. It was the relation to “fuzziness” that was of import, and the argument about maximally was a diversion of no import.
quote:
Scientific observation is anything but imprecise.
It occurred to me this is an opportunity for a “learning experience” with regard to the excluded middle and fuzzy logics.
As I understood it, Mr. Langan wishes to demonstrate a strong concordance of a logic (or logics) with physical reality. In pursuit of that, the point was made about science being “anything but imprecise.” And I take that to be intended to demonstrate an inherent convergence with some more fundamental aspect with that “precision” that would take us further than the “useful fiction” view of the scientific relationship.
But of course though “precision” and “imprecision” would seem to be opposites or compliments, they are each terms that deal in degree. In other words when something is more “precise” it is of lesser degree “imprecise”.
Remember the statement was in the form of an absolute—“Scientific observation is anything but imprecise.” Anything but means that science is never imprecise.
But now take a conjunction of those notions with degree—and a matter can be simultaneously precise and imprecise at the same time. In other words the middle ground is not excluded. The aspect, called upon as useful in the argument against an excluded middle case, provides an excellent case of demonstration of a non-excluded middle. Thus while being “but imprecise” science is simultaneously being imprecise!
quote:
"Physical reality must conform to 2-valued logic in every observable respect (whether or not it maps consistently to any particular set of contingent expressions)."
But of course “2-valued logic” is something that exists in language. Logic concepts, like “AND” are relative to categorization, and such categorization in the human is quite apparently an approximate affair with regard to the real-world.
Mr. Langan, is that statement (just quoted) a conclusion, or is it a premise? Because if it is a conclusion, then we should at least be pointed to the premises, or told to read your paper rather than arguments here. But if it is a premise then I find it unjustified in discussion here so far. In either case arguments here have been unconvincing, because either they have failed to represent a 50 page paper’s conclusions (and given no references), or they have simply failed to justify the excluded middle as inherent in reality.
As far as I can see, the excluded middle only exists in our minds as an ideal, and demonstrating its “conformance to every observable respect” will take a lot more than has been presented here. I have taken your example, and demonstrated at least one “observable respect” in which the excluded middle did not inhere—that is sufficient to counter an absolute or all-encompassing statement like “every observable respect”. Do your conclusions still come with that statement being just “very often correct”, or “correct as a useful fictiion”?
[ 13. October 2003, 04:19: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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Rex Kerr
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posted 13. October 2003 05:44
I suppose I should try to bake my comment a little more, given the unexpectedly high level of attention it has received.
I was not trying to imply that the CTMU cannot even account for imprecision in perception. I'm happy to grant that it (probably) can.
Rather, I was referring to the fact that CTMU is based on principles that rely critically on the fact that (infinitely precise) 2VL works, is fundamental for all knowledge (or at least human knowledge), and so on. Chris has argued for this point several times already in this thread, and page 16 and on are pretty clear about the matter. If the world were uncategorizable, there would be no need for 2VL, so CTMU depends critically upon this aspect.
I therefore do not think that one can argue that the statement was inaccurate. However, my implication was that there was some problem with that situation. I'll try to explain better what it is.
When one is constructing a world-view, it is necessarily circular. However, if you don't get back your original premises in a reasonably solid form, it's worth considering whether the view really matches the world that it was supposed to. The use of logic and syntax in CTMU is based on premises that are motivated by observation of human capabilities. But only one aspect of these capabilities--use of logic and correct categorization--is referred to. When you get back to the point of validating the scientific method, turn it on humans, and start measuring them, you find that firstly, they don't seem to use logic inherently, and secondly, imprecision is rampant. So the observations about reliability were not really recovered at the end of the loop, as far as I can tell. This doesn't necessarily mean CTMU is wrong, but it is unsettling.
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I'm going to disagree with gedanken where he says, "When we are left with only 'raw perception' we are also left with the greatest uncertanty," and claim the exact opposite.
Raw perception, I claim, is where we have the greatest certainty. When one has a perception, it is scarecly possible to doubt that one is having that perception. The uncertainty comes in when trying to make that perception cohere with the others one has previously had, in some framework of abstraction.
It is the layers of abstraction that let us predict future behavior (raw perception predicts nothing). But there is an uneasy balance here: too little abstraction, and one loses a predictive model of the world; too much abstraction, and one loses the correspondence to perception. These lead to different types of uncertainty. The first leads to uncertainty of what is to come and whether the present is related to anything else, while the second leads to uncertainty that what you are perceiving is handled by your model of the world.
[ 13. October 2003, 16:15: Message edited by: Rex Kerr ]
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gedanken
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posted 13. October 2003 10:20
quote:
Raw perception, I claim, is where we have the greatest certainty. When one has a perception, it is scarcely possible to doubt that one is having that perception. The uncertainty comes in when trying to make that perception cohere with the others one has previously had, in some framework of abstraction.
I don't really want to disagree with this, but must do so in some manner.
The reason is that it gets back to the same original classification problem. When one says "that perception", which perception is one referring to? To label it requires memory. And memory is already faulty, even immediately after events. (Not entirely so, of course. As I have said, it is in fact the best we have to work with. Read a meter. Write down or record the value. Did you make an error? Was that potential error one only of probability, or was it inherent in problems of perception of meter reading? Did I mean 2.55 or 2.65? Oops, the divisions were 0.2 units, rather than 0.1, so what was that “raw perception” again? Was I making that mistake in the last three readings? Wait a minute, which reading was that I first had that problem? Oh curse.)
(And in my little sequence, I realize I was not describing strictly “raw perceptions”, but meant to refer to the “raw perceptions” behind those syntactically recorded indications.)
So when one asks to describe a comparison of "perceptions" the only way for the statement to be strictly (and non-fuzzily) true as Rex has mentioned is if one is actually defining classification of perception abstractly and constructing a tautology. In that case one has gone beyond measurement into recursively using one of the "logics" to demonstrate the consequent sought. Reword to "is this perception" the same as "that other perception" (in terms of "raw perception"), and we are back to all the issues in which any fuzziness anywhere in the world are based. (And I mean that even if comparing what is considered to be two memories of the same perception. What are two memories? Perhaps remembering the “same perception” on two different occasions, even in succession separated only by seconds. Ever do a “double take”?)
I do not deny that asymptotically one would have convergence as a pair of perceptions were aligned by having them occur in the same human at the same time, but that is yet another way of doing something rather interesting: One is bridging the worlds of actual "raw perception" and use of a very logic being discussed. Thus one has constructed a hybrid, partly discussing "raw perception" itself, and partly discussing symbolic manipulation of or from perception--necessarily fuzzy. That we can asymptotically define convergence, symbolically, is not even a resolution of the inherent problem.
And do you deny that "eye witness" information, while relied upon, is notoriously unreliable? How is that 'anything but' a case of "raw perception"? (And I highlight 'anything but' having just chided Mr. Langan about the terminology. When I use a construction of absolute certainty, I am not implying it becomes absolutely certain. And I also must point out that I meant ‘certainty’ in the fuzzy sense, as opposed to the probabilistic sense, or perhaps in both senses.)
But of course the “raw perception” is most fundamental. No other statement can be constructed that does not depend upon some assembly of “raw perceptions” in its entirety. And of course very little can be made of immediate “raw perception” except in a reactive manner, and it takes time to assimilate perceptions to memory and “experience”. I think that in what Rex (and Mr. Langan) are saying, that “raw perception” must be fundamental and thus must in assembly be considered as “most certain”, to the extent that anything can be certain. As long as perceptions are not taken as individual, I agree with the intent or direction.
And of course “raw perception” is the most immediate basis for action. If one sees danger coming, one better react rather than contemplate the accuracy—though in many cases choosing the most beneficial action requires a degree of careful reflection in the face of immediate danger. Experience can prepare one to think and react in a most advantageous manner, because the assembly of previous experience (or of “raw perceptions”) provides the most useful source of information for processing current “raw perceptions”. At no point am I denying that “raw perception” is the best we have to work with—just we have to ‘work’ with it.
[ 13. October 2003, 14:45: Message edited by: gedanken ]
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