# HG changeset patch # User Henry S Thompson # Date 1747928556 -3600 # Node ID 9ca6db06a0033654818e7be84938421cc53ff7bf # Parent e7fe2a64e502269679b2e1a0a944d755ba110124 in progress diff -r e7fe2a64e502 -r 9ca6db06a003 2025-05-08.txt --- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000 +++ b/2025-05-08.txt Thu May 22 16:42:36 2025 +0100 @@ -0,0 +1,63 @@ +[HST spent too long trying to get the astonishing fact of language + evolution on the table as something which deserves a place in GA] + +The inscrutability of the size of Universe is another thing that +defies comprehension. + +If it's just chance that we happen to have come to be in a corner of +that Universe where recursive compositional expressive mechanisms are +possible the unlikelihood isn't an argument against it being the case. + +Suppose I were to say to a high-school class we agree to have +recursively-specifiable syntactic and semantic language, and have a +brain that produces and consumes its product, and yes, it's unlikely +in the extreme, but so-be-it. + +Is there anything to conclude from that. + +Imagine the course we're teaching, and a typology of unlikelihoods, +smallness and small-enough-ness. Very^4 unlikely that we'll gasp for +breath because the oxygen has all left the room. Do we have to have a +view on whether there's a universe almost like ours where the same +UUID _does_ get minted for two different objects? + +What are we doing? We want to... MacIntyre says we need 'real' +language to reflect on/assess our beliefs and desires. Evolved +corners of the universe that have the requisite properties that [this +process] can be enjoined are astonishingly unlikely, but we are +evidently in one. + +What more do we need, in order to have intentionality. + +[HST] MacIntyre grants (persistent of) categorisations +[BCS] Sufficient, or Necessary? [HST] I'll take that as a homework assignment + +[BCS] Suppose we have a minimal 'higher' animal: persistent individuals and +categorisation. Do you have anything yet that reeks of the religious? +My intuition is 'no'. The critter has to stand up on its hind legs +and _wonder_, in order for there to be... in order for its finitude, +one might say, to lead it to [HST ask Why?][ref. _Child's Christmas in +Wales] + +MacIntyre on Davidson? Counterfactuals are crucial to practical +reasoning. BCS says I could imagine a counterfactual toting rational +argumenter, who still lacks this openness to God and to wonder. + +And until an AI system can wonder, I won't be particularly +interested/concerned, it will still be a mere machine. + +Haugeland distinguishes the impossible from the possible but not +actual from the actual. + +"A blue proton" gets you in to trouble. + +With respect of our project, and the opening salvos of GA, there is a +need to characterise the territory that we want to open up, and +something has to be very open to not reduce to boring behaviourism. + +The speaker has to be gripped by a certain openness, a certain +possibility, will this cake rise whatever. How to open the space +enough for wonder to be genuinely gripping, seems important. + +We want people to want to read this after the first page or two, even +if they can't say exactly why. diff -r e7fe2a64e502 -r 9ca6db06a003 2025-05-22.txt --- /dev/null Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 1970 +0000 +++ b/2025-05-22.txt Thu May 22 16:42:36 2025 +0100 @@ -0,0 +1,97 @@ +The unlikelihood of being able to ask these questions. +The fraction that is solid is tiny. The right size solid is to a +... of measure zero, and then left arising there is another tiny +factor. + +That doesn't pose a metaphysical problem for the project, because we +are those things, isn't it amazing that that 1/10^40 chance came good. + +What we are left with we see two ways of trying to understand, the +romantic idealisation of science, that it will produce a causal, +bumpint-and-shoving picture on the one hand, the conceptions of the +religious sensibilities on the other. If you take the deliverables of +science seriously, none of the foundations of that romantic 19th +century view are tenable. + +It is more unlikely than our mind can grasp. Measurement? + +That there are limitations on what we can in fact understand _in +principle_ is itself very hard to get our heads around. + +[HST primary-school vs. post-grad physics (it's OK to teach Newton to +kids even though it's false) and religion (it's not OK to teach +Christianity to kids)] + +At the beginning of the GA text it says that contemporary science +actually runs rough-shod over the presumptions of primary-school +science, but there was a question as to whether the non-effectiveness +stuff just leads to a 'classical' embodiment view or goes further into +the territory I _claim_ for it, getting much closer to religious +sensibility territory. I'm going to just state that this stuff is +domesticating the territory of r_s: this is all still pre-amble. + +What can we say if we step back and consider the world and our place +in it in the light of the new [e.g. non-effectiveness?] scientific +understanding, + +Try to articulate the ontological and epistemolical theses and frame +them in such a way that they end up with "this may not be God, but +it's close enough"... + +Wondering whether we should just try to do that, just rewrite the +paper, more clearly and more relaxedly, and just say that. + +That does mean starting with a blank sheet of paper. + +What stands between me and doing that, where are the lacunae? + +Suppose I start with the unlikelihood, and try to build forward from +there. + +[pause - HST: how does that get to e.g. non-effectiveness/deiexis/embodiment?] + +Maybe part 1 is just the sheer unlikelihood + +Part 2 is what, though, can we say about the world +And then, as best we understand it, 1st off differential equations have +turned out to be the framework that can best carry the expressions of +the regularities [that we encounter in the world], and in particular +something like quantum-field-theoretic vortexes... + +There's also the question that given that each of us is a patch of that +[?] universe, what is it to know or understand anything, then the +Object book is relevant, registration and that story, the reification +of objects, registration in general. + +And then there's this thing, which I think is the most urgent for me +to say compellingly and compactly, which is that if for example I +register something as an object, or I register [what did Strawson call +it, the instantiation of fields, "it's raining", "it's sunny here +now", the instantiation not of properties but of qualities]. But let +me talk objects. + +There's this point which is fundamental to everything, that if I +register an object as an object, what I'm registering is not really +just the object, what I'm registering is a patch of the ineffable, +which I register _as_ an object, and I say "this is an apple", but +that [ has not done justice to the patch -- my _view_ is not +restricted to its appleness, but my attention, that to which I'm +attentionally directed, is what I'm registering as an apple. I +continue to look beyond, to look beyond, to be aware of the finitude +of the registration.] + +The apple, as it were, is not the-patch-registered-as-an-apple. The +apple _is_ a full inenffable patch in all its glory---that which I have +registered as an apple. That to which I'm directed---the object of my +attention transcends its exemplification of all apple properties, +there's more to it than its just being an apple. And not just more to +it in the sense that there's more to all apples than their appleness +or what follows from their being apples, but more about this +particular apple than words can express. It's kind of as if one is +standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean at night and there's motion, +barely detectable motion, and I say "there's a ship moving slowly down +the channel" and you look too and say "yeah, I see". Both of us are +attentive to, attend to, that which we're supposing is a moving ship. + + +