Re: Say Anything: Truth under cultural and conceptual assault

Gary Richmond wrote:
> Murray,
> 
> You wrote:
> 
> 
>>When the fringe becomes the public sphere it's time to leave the 
>>building, unless
>>one is up to the battle of trying to change the minds of the
>>"faithful," an almost by-definition impossible task.
>>
>>[And yes, Gary, I'd love to know how to accomplish something like
>>that, but my skepticism since about 2000 has only grown deeper.]
> 
> 
> Reading Rorty always make me think of passages in Peirce where he argues 
> that "Despair is insanity" and "He who would not sacrifice his own soul 
> to save the whole world, is, as it seems to me, illogical in all his 
> inferences, collectively. Logic is rooted in the social principle." And 
> beyond this notion that despair is illogical must be the sense that ". . 
> . any task which lies before us. . . has its importance. But there our 
> responsibility ends. . .  as it [consists wholly in] our playing the 
> part that is allotted to us." [See somewhat longer quotations below my 
> signature]

Gary,

I didn't intend to connote a sense of despair, only that of skepticism.
I will certainly despair as the flood waters rise upon my house, or
when we are unable to go out of doors without UV protection, or when

Re: A quote of a quote in a quote

On Tue, 23 Aug 2005 10:42:50 -0400
"John F. Sowa" <sowa@...> wrote:

> Enough said.

I don't think so.
If we really have to care about "philosophy" could we focus on *recent* developments rather
than rehashing forever, Peirce said this and Aristotle said that and blah-blah-blah...
And George Bush is doubleplusnogood (I share this opinion but WTF is this doing on *this* list?)

I suggest as a seed:
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/scientific-method.html

Containing a quote from Peter Medawar:

   "If the purpose of scientific methodology is to prescribe or expound a 
   system of enquiry or even a code of practice for scientific behavior,
   then scientists seem to be able to get on very well without it. 
   Most scientists receive no tuition in scientific method,
   but those who have been instructed perform no better as scientists than those who have not.
   Of what other branch of learning can it be said that it gives its proficients no advantage;
   that it need not be taught or, if taught, need not be learned? "

JLD
========================
To post a message, send mail to cg@...
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@... with the command
'unsubscribe cg' in the message body.
See http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.ai.conceptual-graphs for the mailing list archive.
See http://www.cs.uah.edu/~delugach/CG for the Conceptual Graph Home Page.

RE: Say Anything: Truth under cultural and conceptual assault

Since we're going all over on this thread:

Bullard, Claude L (Len)
> Engineering can produce things that work but aren't logical if the logic
> is based on false premises or a disputable theory (the "famous
> bumblebees" can't fly example). 

Do people still believe that myth? (or the Bernoulli one for that matter - if the main component of lift for
conventional wings was created by air travelling faster over the top edge, airliner wings would have to be
twice as thick as their chord, but as school kids don't learn vector calculus they don't have the maths to
model the Coanda effect, so get lied to in physics lessons)

Insects (or Concorde) would not get off the ground without leading edge vortices. Saying bumblebees can't
fly because 'conventional' (presumably pre 1950's) aerodynamics says so is like saying computers can't
work because there's nothing to generate the steam for the pistons.

Pete

********************************************************************
This email and any attachments are confidential to the intended
recipient and may also be privileged. If you are not the intended
recipient please delete it from your system and notify the sender.
You should not copy it or use it for any purpose nor disclose or
distribute its contents to any other person.
********************************************************************
========================
To post a message, send mail to cg@...
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@... with the command
'unsubscribe cg' in the message body.

RE: Say Anything: Truth under cultural and conceptual assault

Correct.  With subsequent theorization and testing, it 
was proven the bumblebee can fly.  A spokesman for the 
bumblebees said, "We are greatly relieved because the 
anxiety about next year's mating dance was growing 
and threatening our well-being."  Spokesman for the 
IEEE expressed there feelings about the announcement 
saying that they have full confidence in the bees 
ability to implement the new theories successfully.

len

From: owner-cg@...
[mailto:owner-cg@...]On Behalf Of
Kirkham, Pete (UK)

Since we're going all over on this thread:

Bullard, Claude L (Len)
> Engineering can produce things that work but aren't logical if the logic

> is based on false premises or a disputable theory (the "famous

> bumblebees" can't fly example). 

Do people still believe that myth? (or the Bernoulli one for that matter -
if the main component of lift for conventional wings was created by air
travelling faster over the top edge, airliner wings would have to be twice
as thick as their chord, but as school kids don't learn vector calculus they
don't have the maths to model the Coanda effect, so get lied to in physics
lessons)

RE: Say Anything: Truth under cultural and conceptual assault

Re: A quote of a quote in a quote

Jean-Luc,

If you had been reading these notes, you should have
noticed that Peter M's statement is patently false
about the effects of philosophy on 20th-century science:

JLD> I suggest as a seed:
 > http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/scientific-method.html
 >
 > Containing a quote from Peter Medawar:
 >
 > "If the purpose of scientific methodology is to prescribe or expound
 > a system of enquiry or even a code of practice for scientific
 > behavior, then scientists seem to be able to get on very well without
 > it.   Most scientists receive no tuition in scientific method,
 > but those who have been instructed perform no better as scientists
 > than those who have not.  Of what other branch of learning can it be
 > said that it gives its proficients no advantage; that it need not be
 > taught or, if taught, need not be learned? "

Just look at the difference between Ernst Mach's philosophy and
Einstein's philosophy.  Mach had a great deal of influence in
preventing physicists from recognizing and adopting Boltzmann's
methodology throughout the latter part of the 19th-century and
into the beginning of the 20th.  With aid from Carnap and others,
Mach had a profound and devastating influence on 20th-century
psychology and linguistics.  Einstein was the savior of physics
by demonstrating a totally new scientific methodology in his
three papers of 1905 and in his subsequent work over the next
20 years.  The next great leap was taken by Niels Bohr and
Werner Heisenberg in quantum mechanics during the 1920s.

All five of the philosophers mentioned in that paragraph --
Mach, Carnap, Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg -- also happened
to be practicing scientists.  (In earlier years, you can add
Newton and Aristotle to the list of research scientists who
had a profound influence on the philosophy of science.)

Medawar's observation is based on looking at philosophers
who had *zero* experience as research scientists.  He is
correct in his observation that such philosophers are very
wisely ignored by scientists.  But those philosophers who
were also research scientists are responsible for some of
the greatest advances (and some great disasters) in science.

That is one of my primary reasons for recommending Peirce.
He was a recognized research scientist in the forefront of
two fields at the same time:  In the late 19th-century, he
was a pioneer in logic and one of the leading experimental
physicists in the measurement of gravity -- which earned him
the *first* invitation to a scientific congress in Europe
by *any* American scientist.

In conjunction with his work on gravity, Peirce was the *first*
person to recommend the use of a wavelength of light as a method
for measurement of length, he designed the apparatus for using
that method, and he used it to measure the lengths of his
pendulums for measuring gravity.  When he talked about how
scientists do science, he really knew.

Summary:  Philosophy of science has had a profound influence
on the way scientists do science, but unless the philosopher
also happens to be at the forefront of research in at least
one scientific discipline, he or she will be ignored. However,
being a research scientist is no guarantee of the ability to
do good philosophy of science, as Ernst Mach demonstrated.

John Sowa

========================
To post a message, send mail to cg@...
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@... with the command
'unsubscribe cg' in the message body.
See http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.ai.conceptual-graphs for the mailing list archive.
See http://www.cs.uah.edu/~delugach/CG for the Conceptual Graph Home Page.
For help or administrative assistance, mail to owner-cg@...

Re: A quote of a quote in a quote

On Thu, 01 Sep 2005 10:25:10 -0400
"John F. Sowa" <sowa@...> wrote:

 .../...

> All five of the philosophers mentioned in that paragraph --
> Mach, Carnap, Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg -- also happened
> to be practicing scientists.  (In earlier years, you can add
> Newton and Aristotle to the list of research scientists who
> had a profound influence on the philosophy of science.)

.../...

> Summary:  Philosophy of science has had a profound influence
> on the way scientists do science, but unless the philosopher
> also happens to be at the forefront of research in at least
> one scientific discipline, he or she will be ignored. However,
> being a research scientist is no guarantee of the ability to
> do good philosophy of science, as Ernst Mach demonstrated.

Fine!
Then *who* could be some of the "good" 21st century philosopher scientists?
We need to find them.
Mulling over and over on *previous* philosopher scientists views may be of some use to straighten current practices
certainly not to discover new ones (new "paradigms" but this word is a bit tainted by hype and abuse).

JLD

========================
To post a message, send mail to cg@...
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@... with the command
'unsubscribe cg' in the message body.
See http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.ai.conceptual-graphs for the mailing list archive.
See http://www.cs.uah.edu/~delugach/CG for the Conceptual Graph Home Page.
For help or administrative assistance, mail to owner-cg@...

Re: Say Anything: Truth under cultural and conceptual assault

Quoting Murray Altheim <m.altheim@...>:

> A few years later, the leader of the band Cake, John McCrea, asked
> me to debate a born-again fellow on video, as an experiment he was
> conducting into his own beliefs. I came all armed to the teeth with
> Biblical contradictions, he with his knowledge of scripture. I thought
> it might be an interesting time -- it wasn't. There was simply no
> common ground to begin a rational discussion, as there was no room
> for rationality. There was nothing I could say that would remotely
> alter his beliefs.
> 
> So when I say "impossible" I'm only referring to trying to convert
> the converted. If not impossible, certainly nothing I would attempt
> anymore. Educate the children perhaps, if you can get them out of
> their home-schooled, vouchered, teach-creationism-in-the-classroom
> world.

Instead of trying to re-convert the converted, there is a possibility 
to talk in the language of the converted. When X has some sort of a 
dogma, it might not be fruitfull at all to try to try to change 
X's beliefs or even critisize them, but rather to dig the usefull 
ideas out of X's approach (if any) and ask for further clarifications 
of only the usefull parts, possibly ignoring totally those parts which 
are in contradiction with one's own dogma.

Once me and my community-artist friend JP Kaljonen tried approx. the 
same thing as you, with Jehova's witnesses. I tried to make them 
say two things that they consider as truths, which would have 
been paradoxical together, but it appeared to be impossible. No 
matter what is the issue, if one's premiss is God, then everything 
can be justified based on that. Anyway, within every dogmatic 
premiss, there are some issues about which the converted must be 
able to speak of, because othervise they would not be converted.  
We ended up in ontologizing of the deepest dogma
(cretion->present->eschatology) of seven religions that are based on 
the Palestinian tradition. This project should be considered under the
domain of art and ecumeny. Some example pics:
http://www.helsinki.fi/~astyrman/jpkaljonen/

The same kinds of 'religious' dogmatic features can be found
from all people, but especially from scientist, and very 
especially from mathematicians; the dream of an unchanging and 
controllable world. The funny thing is that even in academic 
metaphysics the same kinds of logical/mathematical structures 
are used in proving a variety of different sorts of things, and 
at the same time logical positivism and logical atomism is 
declared as a dead end. 

Avril Styrman

---
If someone mentions something even slightly religious within a 
scientific community, he is crucified.
========================
To post a message, send mail to cg@...
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@... with the command
'unsubscribe cg' in the message body.
See http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.ai.conceptual-graphs for the mailing list archive.
See http://www.cs.uah.edu/~delugach/CG for the Conceptual Graph Home Page.
For help or administrative assistance, mail to owner-cg@...

RE: Say Anything: Truth under cultural and conceptual assault

From cognitive perspectives, this is likely true:  unless 
what you present corresponds to an internal schema that 
the other parties use to organize and remember your 
presentation, they are not only not likely to agree, 
they didn't hear you to begin with.   

o  What we don't recognize, we don't notice.    
o  The more ambiguity, the longer it takes to notice.
o  The more we know about a subject, the less we learn 
   from any presentation that reformulates it or 
   contradicts it.

This is a profoundly difficult problem in all negotiations.

It isn't a result of bad attitudes, but, in theory, a result 
of the perception to short-term/long-term storage mechanisms 
of mammal brains.  Efforts to persuade or train require the 
presenter to understand and apply devices that bring the 
right schemata to the forefront, assemble the presentation 
in those terms, then slowly and simply fill in variations 
that lead toward the point to be taught or acquired.

Trolling works because it excites the brain and emotions 
incite a lot of neuronal activity.  However, if it is to 
work, once the initial flurry of emotion-laden statements 
are made, the thread is guided toward the principal attractors 
for those who remain.  As it begins to orbit these, slight 
bits of prodding push it toward rational rather than eccentric 
orbits.  As the stand-offs see that and items which correspond 
to their schemata emerge, they will engage.   At the end you 
can have a new or at least novel consensus and understanding 
plus a reasonable task list for new topics.  Prodding slight 
because trying to jerk a thread into a new perspective causes 
interests to drop off rapidly and one can lose the insightful 
players with fresh insights.  Remember, the experts are 
convinced they already know the answers, so like limit or 
fixed attractors, they never exhibit new knowledge or behaviors. 
To get a fresh perspective, you have to accept the strange.

Observing thread bifurcations is a good way to understand open 
ended negotiations and devise tactics.  If one could automatically 
derive conceptual graphs from threads, it would be a fascinating 
tool to have and apply over community threads.  Probably profitable 
too since open source (as in humint) intel is a subject of some 
interest these days.

Attention is the currency of learning.  Jhana is true magic.

len

From: owner-cg@...
[mailto:owner-cg@...]On Behalf Of Avril
Styrman

Instead of trying to re-convert the converted, there is a possibility 
to talk in the language of the converted. When X has some sort of a 
dogma, it might not be fruitfull at all to try to try to change 
X's beliefs or even critisize them, but rather to dig the usefull 
ideas out of X's approach (if any) and ask for further clarifications 
of only the usefull parts, possibly ignoring totally those parts which 
are in contradiction with one's own dogma.
========================
To post a message, send mail to cg@...
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@... with the command
'unsubscribe cg' in the message body.
See http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.ai.conceptual-graphs for the mailing list archive.
See http://www.cs.uah.edu/~delugach/CG for the Conceptual Graph Home Page.
For help or administrative assistance, mail to owner-cg@...

Re: A quote of a quote in a quote

> Mulling over and over on *previous* philosopher scientists views may 
> be of some use to straighten current practices
> certainly not to discover new ones (new "paradigms" but this word is a 
> bit tainted by hype and abuse).

Dear Jean-Luc,

This is patently false. Simple example - 3 years ago I took some of the 
definitions from Euclid's Elements of Geometry, some of mathematical 
ramblings from Hermann Grassmann (19th century linguist and 
philosopher), and used them to build negation operators into search 
engines.

Result? Up to 87% reduction in unwanted synonyms or neighbors of 
unwanted terms.
Reason this hadn't been done before? Ignorance of scholarship outside 
our own timeframe.

Best wishes,
Dominic

========================
To post a message, send mail to cg@...
To unsubscribe, send mail to majordomo@... with the command
'unsubscribe cg' in the message body.
See http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.ai.conceptual-graphs for the mailing list archive.
See http://www.cs.uah.edu/~delugach/CG for the Conceptual Graph Home Page.
For help or administrative assistance, mail to owner-cg@...