Is the world black-and-white, or is there gray area?
Mike H
My claim is that since the laws of physics can be stated in
mathematical terms, and mathematics is black-and-white, the world is
black-and-white, and there can be no gray area.
All objections are welcome.
Sean
"Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1146661056.3...@j73g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
I object !!
The world is a rainbow.
The only problem is, some people are colour blind.
Mike H
Would you care to elaborate more on your opinion? In what way does your
objection involve colors?
Sean
Two very good question Mr Mike. I would put it this way .....
I think you could do a bit of homework on non-sequiturs. eg extrapolating
laws of physics being described by mathematical terms into a concept of the
"world".
Rainbows are part of the world .... are they or are they not? Yes they are.
One can explain or define a rainbow with the use of maths, yes true.
Now, please show me the mathematics that defines having one's breath taken
away at the sheer beauty of a rainbow in a particular moment.
This undboubtedly should prove to you that your inital
statement/belief/postulate/claim was/is in fact a non-sequitur, and is
therefore illogical and unfounded as presented in the terms used.
Best I can do, it;s late in the evening.
Jane_Doe2351
That would be our mistaking a human description of the world for being
the world itself. Scientific and mathematical language is a secondary
symbolic representation with a phenomenal representation. No
representation can be the original world itself, even if the latter is
the cause of the former (in at least in an indirect sense).
A quote from Alan Kay: Einstein said "You must learn to distinguish
between what is true and what is real". An apt longer quote of his is:
"As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not
certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality".
I.e. it is "true" that the three angles of a triangle add up to 180 in
Euclidean geometry of the plane, but it is not known how to show that
this could hold in our physical universe (if there is any mass or
energy in our universe then it doesn't seem to hold, and it is not
actually known what our universe would be like without any mass or
energy). So, science is a relationship between what we can represent
and are able to think about, and "what's out there": it's an extension
of good map making, most often using various forms of mathematics as
the mapping languages. When we guess in science we are guessing about
approximations and mappings to languages, we are not guessing about
"the truth" (and we are not in a good state of mind for doing science
if we think we are guessing "the truth" or "finding the truth"). This
is not at all well understood outside of science, and there are
unfortunately a few people with degrees in science who don't seem to
understand it either.
-
Sir Frederick
How about black-and-gray-and-white-and-??
The situation is apparently not constrained to your
models. It is stranger than you can consider.
Your model based categories are irrelevant except
to your models.
The formal laws of physics are reductionistic.
Holism studies are pursuing organizing principles
that will "extend" those "laws".
IMO higher dimensional relationships are extent.
Can't even think about those.
--
Best,
Frederick Martin McNeill
Poway, California, United States of America
mmcn...@fuzzysys.com
http://www.fuzzysys.com
http://members.cox.net/fmmcneill
*************************
Phrase of the week :
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
-Robert A. Heinlein
:-))))Snort!)
**************************************
SleepyHeed
If you can produce a mathematical description of Picasso's Guernica
that sums up the horror of war and also introduces hidden symbolic
messages then I'll believe that the world is black and white.
tg
> On 3 May 2006 05:57:36 -0700, "Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >I want to hear your thoughts. This topic is very imporant to me.
> >
> >My claim is that since the laws of physics can be stated in
> >mathematical terms, and mathematics is black-and-white, the world is
> >black-and-white, and there can be no gray area.
> >
> >All objections are welcome.
>
> How about black-and-gray-and-white-and-??
> The situation is apparently not constrained to your
> models. It is stranger than you can consider.
> Your model based categories are irrelevant except
> to your models.
> The formal laws of physics are reductionistic.
> Holism studies are pursuing organizing principles
And how is that not "reductionistic"?
-tg
Jane_Doe2351
been *within* rather than *with*: "Scientific and mathematical language
is a secondary symbolic representation with a phenomenal
That would be our mistaking a human description of the world for being
the world itself. Scientific and mathematical language is a secondary
symbolic representation within a phenomenal representation. No
representation can be the original world itself, even if the latter is
the cause of the former (in at least in an indirect sense).
Sean
"Jane_Doe2351" <bw...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1146664865.6...@g10g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
That last bit is SO true, imho .....
....... and was all well put, especially for an alledged dead person.
Sean
> Holism studies are pursuing organizing principles
> that will "extend" those "laws".
>
How are your holism studies going?
....... and btw ur quote missed "good sex/lover" in your sig file <G>
Sir Frederick
>Sir Frederick wrote:
>> On 3 May 2006 05:57:36 -0700, "Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >I want to hear your thoughts. This topic is very imporant to me.
>> >
>> >My claim is that since the laws of physics can be stated in
>> >mathematical terms, and mathematics is black-and-white, the world is
>> >black-and-white, and there can be no gray area.
>> >
>> >All objections are welcome.
>>
>> How about black-and-gray-and-white-and-??
>> The situation is apparently not constrained to your
>> models. It is stranger than you can consider.
>> Your model based categories are irrelevant except
>> to your models.
>> The formal laws of physics are reductionistic.
>> Holism studies are pursuing organizing principles
>
>And how is that not "reductionistic"?
>
>-tg
Some quantity of "parts" are needed for the "organizing principle"
to act. At least that's the idea.
Read the article "More is Different" by P. Anderson in Science Magazine.
Then the book "A Different Universe" by Laughlin.
Sir Frederick
>
>> Holism studies are pursuing organizing principles
>> that will "extend" those "laws".
>>
>a side question ...
>How are your holism studies going?
>
I suspect we will need some new generations and some
real geniuses to make progress. Mostly, the writings available
express frustrations. Some point to phenomena that reductionism
cannot handle, such as "entanglement" and nonlocality.
I'm now reading about higher dimensions. "Things" have to manifest.
But then, what do I know?
>
>....... and btw ur quote missed "good sex/lover" in your sig file <G>
>
tg
Sir Frederick wrote:
> On 3 May 2006 06:51:59 -0700, "tg" <tgde...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> >Sir Frederick wrote:
> >> On 3 May 2006 05:57:36 -0700, "Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> >I want to hear your thoughts. This topic is very imporant to me.
> >> >
> >> >My claim is that since the laws of physics can be stated in
> >> >mathematical terms, and mathematics is black-and-white, the world is
> >> >black-and-white, and there can be no gray area.
> >> >
> >> >All objections are welcome.
> >>
> >> How about black-and-gray-and-white-and-??
> >> The situation is apparently not constrained to your
> >> models. It is stranger than you can consider.
> >> Your model based categories are irrelevant except
> >> to your models.
> >> The formal laws of physics are reductionistic.
> >> Holism studies are pursuing organizing principles
> >
> >And how is that not "reductionistic"?
> >
> >-tg
>
> Some quantity of "parts" are needed for the "organizing principle"
> to act.
Some quantity of parts are needed for any reductionist principle to act
as well. Can you give a counter-example?
-tg
Sean
"Sir Frederick" <mmcn...@fuzzysys.com> wrote in message
news:sdgh52ho4nf3mk917...@4ax.com...
> On Thu, 4 May 2006 00:24:16 +1000, "Sean" <santimva...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>>> Holism studies are pursuing organizing principles
>>> that will "extend" those "laws".
>>>
>>a side question ...
>>How are your holism studies going?
>>
>
> I suspect we will need some new generations and some
> real geniuses to make progress. Mostly, the writings available
> express frustrations. Some point to phenomena that reductionism
> cannot handle, such as "entanglement" and nonlocality.
> I'm now reading about higher dimensions. "Things" have to manifest.
> But then, what do I know?
More than last week ...... <smile>
Keep at it ..... relax
and THX
gibbs
You have to ask yourself if it really says anything to the claim that the
"world is black-and-white." Compare: Music can be described
mathematically, mathematics is black and white, therefore music is black and
white. Okay, but what in the world does this mean and does it really say
anything about music? It might be an interesting and true point, but it
really says nothing about why music fascinates us.
Mike H
> > Would you care to elaborate more on your opinion? In what way does your
> > objection involve colors?
> >
>
> Two very good question Mr Mike. I would put it this way .....
>
> I think you could do a bit of homework on non-sequiturs. eg extrapolating
> laws of physics being described by mathematical terms into a concept of the
> "world".
>
> Rainbows are part of the world .... are they or are they not? Yes they are.
>
> One can explain or define a rainbow with the use of maths, yes true.
>
> Now, please show me the mathematics that defines having one's breath taken
> away at the sheer beauty of a rainbow in a particular moment.
Emotions are controlled by the limbic system of the brain and depend on
one's neurotransmitter levels. The wiring of the limbic system and the
molecular structure of the neurotransmitters can be described
mathematically.
gibbs
> Emotions are controlled by the limbic system of the brain and depend on
> one's neurotransmitter levels. The wiring of the limbic system and the
> molecular structure of the neurotransmitters can be described
> mathematically.
A shoe can be described mathematically, but that doesn't explain why someone
puts it on.
Mike H
Let me see if I understand you.
You are saying that because our consciousness of the world is not the
world itself, physics can only be a mathematical description of what we
are conscious of, and not the world. Therefore my argument is invalid.
Am I correct?
Mike H
Goal-directed behavior is controlled by the frontal lobes.
Sean
DEFINE "CONTROLLED BY"
Sean
mmmmm, well I didn't ask for the "wiring" or structure to be described
mathematically.
I asked ...... show me mathematically the definition of "having one's breath
taken
>> away at the sheer beauty of a rainbow in a particular moment."
anyway .... what do you mean by "controlled by" ??? ..........
what science proved that chemical reactions created emotional responses
versus an emotion/thought created a sympathetic emotional response reflected
in the chemical reactions?
Brian Fletcher
True, but "dead ended". It is easy to describe a Beethoven symphony,
mathematically.
Dont you think you are missing "something"?
BOfL
>
Brian Fletcher
Goal directed behaviour is 'facilitated by the frontal lobes.
BOfL
Brian Fletcher
You are looking for a black and white answer.Are you correct , being
invalid?
Yes and no.
Different vibes for different planes, exemplified in Seans use of the
'Rainbow Connection' :-)
BOfL
>
Brian Fletcher
> On 3 May 2006 05:57:36 -0700, "Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I want to hear your thoughts. This topic is very imporant to me.
>>
>>My claim is that since the laws of physics can be stated in
>>mathematical terms, and mathematics is black-and-white, the world is
>>black-and-white, and there can be no gray area.
>>
>>All objections are welcome.
>
> How about black-and-gray-and-white-and-??
> The situation is apparently not constrained to your
> models. It is stranger than you can consider.
> Your model based categories are irrelevant except
> to your models.
> The formal laws of physics are reductionistic.
> Holism studies are pursuing organizing principles
> that will "extend" those "laws".
>
> IMO higher dimensional relationships are extent.
> Can't even think about those.
They're not to be "thought about" Fred, but to be experienced. You have to
get beyond the qualia.
BOfL
BernardZ
bw...@yahoo.com says...
> I.e. it is "true" that the three angles of a triangle add up to 180 in
> Euclidean geometry of the plane,
Actually this is a dictionary definition of a triangle. The angles of a
triangle in Euclidean geometry of the plane do add up to 180 or its not
a triangle.
> but it is not known how to show that
> this could hold in our physical universe
>
In our physical world, if you found something in what could be in a
Euclidean geometry of the plane and its angles did not add up to 180
then it ain=3Ft a triangle in Euclidean geometry of the plane.
--
Be careful, what you predict with the theory of human-caused global
warming as it will be tested soon enough as we aren't going to reduce
carbon dioxide emissions.
Observations of Bernard - No 99
SleepyHeed
You could also turn your point on it's head:
P1. Music is all grey
P2. Mathematics can be described musically
Therefore
P3. Mathematics is all grey
Personally I think this just goes to show that one should think twice
before saying that the fact that descriptive tools can be described
using other descriptive tools means that those descriptive tools are
actually quite alike.
Or, to put the same point a different way, just because one can
describe my head mathematically doesn't make my head a purely
mathematical construct. That's just reductionism in a cunning guise.
jimi
trying to label it as something. Thats what the world is.
SleepyHeed
jimi wrote:
> You know what the world is. Take a look at it, experience it without
> trying to label it as something. Thats what the world is.
Except that preparatory to discussing it, we've labelled it! : )
SleepyHeed
jimi wrote:
> You know what the world is. Take a look at it, experience it without
> trying to label it as something. Thats what the world is.
Except that preparatory to discussing it, we've labelled it! : )
Mike H
> "Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1146702829.3...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> >
> > You are saying that because our consciousness of the world is not the
> > world itself, physics can only be a mathematical description of what we
> > are conscious of, and not the world. Therefore my argument is invalid.
> > Am I correct?
>
> You are looking for a black and white answer.Are you correct , being
> invalid?
*People* aren't correct. *Claims* are correct.
I'm not asking Jane if my original claim that the world is
black-and-white is correct. I'm asking her if *another* claim of mine,
that for my original claim I used an invalid argument, is correct.
> Yes and no.
>
> Different vibes for different planes, exemplified in Seans use of the
> 'Rainbow Connection' :-)
You corrected my claim that "goal directed behavior is controlled by
the frontal lobes" by replacing "controlled" with "facilitated". Thank
you.
For my argument that emotions can be described mathematically, you used
the figure of speech "dead ended". What do you mean by this?
You then asked me, "Don't you think you are missing something?" In
fact, yes. I want to make sense of the objective world described by
science from the first-person perspective.
In trying to convince me that there is gray area, think of me as being
somewhat autistic. I will not accept, among other things, what I feel
to be circular arguments that use figures of speech. You will have to
show me a fundamental flaw in black-and-white thinking.
Mike H
> > Emotions are controlled by the limbic system of the brain and depend on
> > one's neurotransmitter levels. The wiring of the limbic system and the
> > molecular structure of the neurotransmitters can be described
> > mathematically.
> >
>
> mmmmm, well I didn't ask for the "wiring" or structure to be described
> mathematically.
>
> I asked ...... show me mathematically the definition of "having one's breath
> taken away at the sheer beauty of a rainbow in a particular moment."
"Having one's breath taken away at the sheer beauty of a rainbow in a
particular moment" is a property. Actually, it's a feeling.
Since it is phrased with words already defined, there can be no
definition of it. It involves someone seeing a rainbow and feeling a
certain way.
Emotions are influenced and facilitated by the limbic system. I have
already shown that brain activity can be described mathematically. I
believe that neural processing is the *essence* of this feeling of
"having one's breath taken away".
It sounds to me like you are asking for something more. Do you believe
that this feeling is *different* from neural processing? If so, why?
> anyway .... what do you mean by "controlled by" ??? ..........
Maybe I should rephrase it. What we call *emotions* -- states of mind
that influence behavior -- are made possible and facilitated by the
limbic system.
> what science proved that chemical reactions created emotional responses
> versus an emotion/thought created a sympathetic emotional response reflected
> in the chemical reactions?
We live in a world of apparently unbreakable physical laws. By
inductive reasoning, we predict that these laws also hold unbreakably
in the human brain. Neuroscience has shown us the details of what
physically takes place here. The brain consists entirely of neurons
that form synaptic connections with each other. When a neuron sends a
signal, it causes molecules called neurotransmitters to be released
into the synapse. If enough neurotransmitters bind to the receptors of
the next neuron, this next neuron sends a signal, and so on. That's
about as much as I know about it.
I don't understand the possibility you mention after "versus". Can you
reword it?
Mike H
> > Goal-directed behavior is controlled by the frontal lobes.
> >
>
> DEFINE "CONTROLLED BY"
You left your caps lock key on by accident.
See my other post for my response.
Jane_Doe2351
>Therefore my argument is invalid. Am I correct?
I'm replying in reverse order, because the rest of my post only
involves elaboration that might be boring. The part of your
proclamation that "the world is black-and-white, and there can be no
gray area" can't be validated or invalidated. It's another in a long
line of unresovable claims revolving around humans achieving certainty
or accessing absolute reality. However, in the context of pragmatism,
your viewpoint might be more useful or reliable in certain situations
than some other opinions. But when based on the idea that physics and
the actual world are interchangeable, or are one and the same, it can
be undermined.
>Let me see if I understand you. You are saying that
> because our consciousness of the world is not the
> world itself, physics can only be a mathematical
> description of what weare conscious of, and not
> the world.
Early natural science was indeed a descriptive inventory of the content
and dynamics of the phenomenal world (i.e., reality as perceived by
humans). But contemporary physics in large part goes beyond those
appearances, engaging in Kant's allowance that you can *try* to get at
the *thing-in-itself* via reason (matured into today's explanatory
theories that make empirical predictions for testing [see Dan Lloyd
quote at bottom]). *Try* is the key word; such a knowledge quest is
asymptotic, as Karl Popper pointed out, it approaches but doesn't
intersect with the Absolute (if there even is any ultimate character of
Nature).
Abstract language is a useful tool for postulating about the noumenal
side of the world, but it can never be complete and flawless because it
is only a symbolic simulation rather than the thing-in-itself. As an
example of how the essentially functionalist approach of physics can
eliminate much detail from even an observable epistemic level, take the
case of statistical physics when applied to society or economics: it
abstracts away all aspects of the human world except the dynamics and
magnitudes that are of concern to that discipline, reducing organisms
to mathematical points and intelligence to randomness in computer
representations. As Jenny Hogan put it in a *New Scientist* article:
"In the gas model, people exchange money in random interactions, much
as atoms exchange energy when they collide. While economists' models
traditionally regard humans as rational beings who always make
intelligent decisions, econophysicists argue that in large systems the
behaviour of each individual is influenced by so many factors that the
net result is random, so it makes sense to treat people like atoms in a
gas. The analogy also holds because money is like energy, in that it
has to be conserved. 'It's like a fluid that flows in interactions,
it's not created or destroyed, only redistributed,' says Yakovenko."
So the world behind phenomenal appearances could be much richer in
detail than our theories or noumenations allow, whether they involve
the micro realm of quantum physics or the macrocosmic realm of
spacetime. Thus, this uncertainty in philosophy and the potential folly
of believing that any human or human labor can omnisciently grasp an
absolute nature of reality.
Dan Lloyd -- "New cosmology and new physics gave European
intelligentsia a galloping case of what we would now call modern
science. In a sense, Descartes' worst fantasies were unfolding: What
everyone thought to be the case was turning out to be systematically
and pervasively false. The forces and laws that governed the physical
world were discovered to be quite different from the folk-inspired and
Aristotelian theories that had seemed so obvious. And so it goes on to
this day: The world-model in one's mind is at best a radical
translation of the distal energies of reality." [Popping the Thought
Balloon]
_
Mike H
I, myself, don't completely understand what my disagreement amounts to.
It has something to do with the world being mathematical, and the
ability of statements supposedly implying "gray area" to be reduced to
speech acts that can be explained as the exact result of neural
processing. The mathematicality of the brain, to me, is a clue that
everything can be reduced to black-and-white, mathematical terms.
gibbs
>> > Emotions are controlled by the limbic system of the brain and depend on
>> > one's neurotransmitter levels. The wiring of the limbic system and the
>> > molecular structure of the neurotransmitters can be described
>> > mathematically.
>> A shoe can be described mathematically, but that doesn't explain why
>> someone
>> puts it on.
> Goal-directed behavior is controlled by the frontal lobes.
The analogy applies to that, too. If you describe the activities of the
brain mathematically, you'll miss saying why it is important for a person
to put it on a shoe. Mathematics is a tool that can be used to describe the
world. But it doesn't explain everything: it is an abstract description.
Immortalist
Mike H wrote:
> I want to hear your thoughts. This topic is very imporant to me.
>
> My claim is that since the laws of physics can be stated in
> mathematical terms, and mathematics is black-and-white, the world is
> black-and-white, and there can be no gray area.
>
> All objections are welcome.
Most if not ALL those theories leave room fo a "margin of error."
Fuzzy logic is a superset of conventional(Boolean) logic that has been
extended to handle the concept of partial truth - truth values between
"completely true" and "completely false". As its name suggests, it is
the logic underlying modes of reasoning which are approximate rather
than exact.
The importance of fuzzy logic derives
from the fact that most modes of human
reasoning and especially common_sense
reasoning are approximate in nature.
http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~nd/surprise_96/journal/vol1/sbaa/article1.html
At this juncture it is important to point out the distinction between
fuzzy systems and probability. Both operate over the same numeric
range, and at first glance both have similar values: 0.0 representing
False (or non-membership), and 1.0 representing True (or membership).
However, there is a distinction to be made between the two statements:
The probabilistic approach yields the natural-language statement,
"There is an 80% chance that Jane is old," while the fuzzy terminology
corresponds to "Jane's degree of membership within the set of old
people is 0.80." The semantic difference is significant: the first view
supposes that Jane is or is not old (still caught in the Law of the
Excluded Middle); it is just that we only have an 80% chance of knowing
which set she is in. By contrast, fuzzy terminology supposes that Jane
is "more or less" old, or some other term corresponding to the value of
0.80. There are more very technical ways to show how comparing
probibility with fuzzy degrees of truth and falsehood don't match.
Natural language abounds with vague and imprecise concepts, such as
"Sally is tall," or "It is very hot today." Such statements are
difficult to translate into more precise language without losing some
of their semantic value: for example, the statement "Sally's height is
152 cm." does not explicitly state that she is tall, and the statement
"Sally's height is 1.2 standard deviations about the mean height for
women of her age in her culture" is fraught with difficulties: would a
woman 1.1999999 standard deviations above the mean be tall? Which
culture does Sally belong to, and how is membership in it defined?
While it might be argued that such vagueness is an obstacle to clarity
of meaning, only the most staunch traditionalists would hold that there
is no loss of richness of meaning when statements such as "Sally is
tall" are discarded from a language. Yet this is just what happens when
one tries to translate human language into classic logic.
"To what degree is something true or false?"
)) There are two types of thinking:
)) Approximate and Exact.
Exact is just a "degree of truth" equal to 100%. Approximate is a
degree of truth between 1% and 99%. Therefore there is only one type of
thinking: Fuzzy Think!
)) Approximate always trumps Exact.
Unlike traditional or classical logic, which attempts to categorize
information into binary patterns such as black / white, true / false,
yes / no, or all / nothing, Fuzzy Logic pays attention to the "excluded
middle" and tries to account for the "grays", the partially true and
partially false situations which make up 99.9% of human reasoning in
everyday life. It builds upon the assumption that everything consists
of degrees on a sliding scale-whether it be truth, age, beauty, wealth,
color, race, or anything else that is effected by the dynamic nature of
human behavior and perception. The question Zadeh always insists upon
asking is, "To what degree is something true or false?"
Zadeh looks around him in the real world which he finds pervaded by
concepts which do not have sharply defined boundaries, where
information is often incomplete or sometimes unreliable. In fact, he
would classify most words as having fuzzy meanings-virtually every
adjective or adverb in ordinary speech. These concepts become clear if
seen in transition from membership to non-membership in gradual, rather
than abrupt, increments.
In quest for precision, scientists have generally attempted to
manipulate the real world into artificial mathematical models that make
no provision for gradation. They have tried to describe the laws
governing the incredibly complex behavior of humans, both singly and in
groups, in mathematical terms similar to those employed in the analysis
of inanimate systems, which, in Zadeh's view, has been, and will
continue to be, a misdirected effort.
Because the human mind can't handle so many isolated separate ideas at
one time, it tends to bundle similarly-related objects into categories
in such a way as to reduce the complexity of the information processing
task. It is this incredible capacity of the human mind to manipulate
these fuzzy or unsharp categories that distinguishes human intelligence
from the machine intelligence of current generation computers.
Because Fuzzy Logic provides the tools to classify information into
broad, coarse categorizations or groupings, it has infinite
possibilities for application which have proven to be much cheaper,
simpler and more effective than other systems in handling complex
information. Fuzzy Logic has extremely broad implications for many
fields not just electrical engineering and computer technology which
have been fairly quick to incorporate its theoretical principles.
Numerous consumer goods especially household products and electronic
equipment-microwaves, cameras, and camcorders already incorporate Fuzzy
Logic into their design. So have computer control systems such as the
famous subway of Sendai, Japan, or numerous complex diagnostic and
monitoring biomedical systems which are starting to be used in
hospitals.
But other fields such as the social sciences-economy, finance,
psychology, sociology, politics, religion, ethics, law, medicine,
geography, folklore, anthropology that deal with the complexity of
human behavior-are just beginning to explore the infinite possibilities
of Fuzzy Logic.
Zadeh was not the first to think about "shades of gray". Philosophers
such as Plato indicated that there was a third region (beyond "true"
and "false") where opposites "tumbled about". Hegel, Marx, Engels and
Lukasiewicz, among others, also dealt with middle regions. But it was
Zadeh who first developed the general theory and laid the foundation
for what Fuzzy Logic is today.
For a well-researched, very readable, popular description of Lotfi
Zadeh and the development of the field of Fuzzy Logic, refer to Daniel
McNeill and Paul Freiberger's award winning book, Fuzzy Logic: The
Revolutionary Computer Technology that is Changing our World, 1993. For
a technical introduction to the field, see Zadeh's Fuzzy Sets and
Applications: Selected Papers. Edited by Yager, Ovchnikov, Tong, and
Nguyen. New York: Wiley, 1987.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Zadeh+fuzzy+logic
------------------------
Now remembering that in fuzzy logic the truth of any statement is a
matter of degree, how will these truth tables be altered? The input
values can be real numbers between 0 and 1. What function will preserve
the results of the AND truth table (for example) and also extend to all
real numbers between 0 and 1?
One answer is the min operation. That is, resolve the statement A AND
B, where A and B are limited to the range (0,1), by using the function
min(A,B). Using the same reasoning, we can replace the OR operation
with the max function, so that A OR B becomes equivalent to max(A,B).
Finally, the operation NOT A becomes equivalent to the operation .
Notice how the truth table above is completely unchanged by this
substitution.
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/doc/matlab/toolbox/fuzzy/fuzzytu4.html
---------------------------------
You want to replace the truth table with the degree table below it?
"Tomorrow will be a very important day for you. It is your birthday. We
are going to invite your two best friends from your preschool. Alice
and Barbara are coming to your party."
Notice that in Western logic this last statement is just true or false.
There are no shades of gray. The result is the same (false) if either
Alice or Barbara do not come for some reason (lines 2 and 3), and if
both Alice and Barbara don't come (line 4).
A B A · B
T T T
T F F
F T F
F F F
A B Result
0 0 0
15 15 .08
30 30 .16
45 45 .25
60 60 .33
75 75 .41
90 90 .50
105 105 .58
120 120 .66
135 135 .75
150 150 .83
165 165 .91
180 180 1.0
Notice that when we say that Alice or Barbara "attends" the little
girl's party that this is potentially a fuzzy concept. Suppose the
mothers of Alice and Barbara tell the little girl's mother that they
will be very busy that day and are not sure they can make it, but they
are pretty sure they can stop by for at least a little while. So you
see from the little girl's point of view "attends" is not a black and
white (true or false) event. What if one girl comes for only fifteen
minutes and the other comes for the full time? Or some other variation
of times? This will make a big difference from the little girl's
perspective for how much truth is in the statement "Alice and Barbara
are coming to your party."
So, here is how a fuzzy logic truth table might look. If we assume the
party is three hours long and we break the party up into 15-minute
segments, we would have a table that looked like this.
...adding degrees-of-truth-reasoning to the very foundations of logic
has a drastic effect on all the other rules of logic. All the rules we
have learned become applicable to only extreme cases -- cases of
complete truth or complete falsehood. Even deductive validity and
invalidity become more like the distinction we made in Chapter 3
between "strong inductive" and "weak inductive" arguments. A fuzzy
valid argument can "blend into" an invalid deductive argument.
The huge issue all this raises is, "What is the status of logic?" The
fancy way philosophers ask the question is, "What is the ontological
status of logic and mathematics?" Are they just rules we make up like
that of a game (e.g.. basketball)? Are they simply part of a cultural
view of reality? Or, are they some kind of absolutes that the universe
obeys, like the law of gravity? Are they simply rules used by the human
mind? Are they rules in the mind of God?
http://www.hcc.hawaii.edu/~pine/Phil110/chapt12sup2.htm
# A OR B = MAX(m(A(x)), m(B(x)))
# A AND B = MIN(m(A(x)), m(B(x)))
# A' (NOT A) = 1 - mA(x)
http://www.generation5.org/content/1999/fuzzyintro.asp
Mike H
For something to be "important", one have a goal in mind. *If you want
to avoid injury*, it is imporant to put on your shoes. All of this
relates to the cause and effect of this mathematical machine we call
the universe.
caesarjbsquitti
Truth is seldom black and white, sometimes grey, but often colors of
the rainbow...
To explain to you....well truth is like the colors of the rainbow...The
Truth is the light....colorless.
http://jesuschristcode.com
The Rainbow of Truth. ©
Caesar J .B. Squitti
gibbs
>> The analogy applies to that, too. If you describe the activities of the
>> brain mathematically, you'll miss saying why it is important for a person
>> to put it on a shoe. Mathematics is a tool that can be used to describe
>> the
>> world. But it doesn't explain everything: it is an abstract description.
> For something to be "important", one have a goal in mind. *If you want
> to avoid injury*, it is imporant to put on your shoes. All of this
> relates to the cause and effect of this mathematical machine we call
> the universe.
That's a pretty big leap to say that because a lot of the universe can be
described mathematically it is a mathematical machine. I can describe a lot
of the universe with words. Is the universe a dictionary, too?
Mike H
> "Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1146772044.4...@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> > to avoid injury*, it is imporant to put on your shoes. All of this
> > relates to the cause and effect of this mathematical machine we call
> > the universe.
>
> That's a pretty big leap to say that because a lot of the universe can be
> described mathematically it is a mathematical machine. I can describe a lot
> of the universe with words. Is the universe a dictionary, too?
That is a false analogy. It is more proper to say that the universe is
a *machine describable with words*.
Sean
"gibbs" <gib...@fakedemailaddress.edu> wrote in message
news:xvmdnYX6p_BQC8fZ...@comcast.com...
depends on how u read it. .... lol
Brian Fletcher
> Brian Fletcher wrote:
>> "Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:1146702829.3...@i40g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
>> > Let me see if I understand you.
>> >
>> > You are saying that because our consciousness of the world is not the
>> > world itself, physics can only be a mathematical description of what we
>> > are conscious of, and not the world. Therefore my argument is invalid.
>> > Am I correct?
>>
>> You are looking for a black and white answer.Are you correct , being
>> invalid?
>
> *People* aren't correct. *Claims* are correct.
When you know you know. The 'source of the claim'(self) is looking for
knowing.
The claim is more akin to a conjecture.
> I'm not asking Jane if my original claim that the world is
> black-and-white is correct. I'm asking her if *another* claim of mine,
> that for my original claim I used an invalid argument, is correct.
Yes, your invalid argument is correct.
>
>> Yes and no.
>>
>> Different vibes for different planes, exemplified in Seans use of the
>> 'Rainbow Connection' :-)
>
> You corrected my claim that "goal directed behavior is controlled by
> the frontal lobes" by replacing "controlled" with "facilitated". Thank
> you.
:-)
>
> For my argument that emotions can be described mathematically, you used
> the figure of speech "dead ended". What do you mean by this?
Perhaps circular would be a better description. But there comes a time
...heheheheh....
>
> You then asked me, "Don't you think you are missing something?" In
> fact, yes. I want to make sense of the objective world described by
> science from the first-person perspective.
The "first person perspective" is a subjective world. It 'contains' the
objective world, but is more.
The analogy re the mathematical Beethoven and the experiential impact are
different versions of the whole. The "music" contains the math, not the
converse.
(Ever heard computer generated "music"...agghhhhhhh ...)
> In trying to convince me that there is gray area, think of me as being
> somewhat autistic. I will not accept, among other things, what I feel
> to be circular arguments that use figures of speech. You will have to
> show me a fundamental flaw in black-and-white thinking.
There is no flaw. It is what it is. A limited part of the whole, which is
why you invalid argument is correct (and will always attract a counter
argument).
BOfL
>
gibbs
> I, myself, don't completely understand what my disagreement amounts to.
> It has something to do with the world being mathematical, and the
> ability of statements supposedly implying "gray area" to be reduced to
> speech acts that can be explained as the exact result of neural
> processing. The mathematicality of the brain, to me, is a clue that
> everything can be reduced to black-and-white, mathematical terms.
Maybe you're mixing up mathematical descriptions (which are abstract) with
what is being described. Sure looks like it to me.
The brain is also gooey, but that doesn't mean the world can be reduced to
goo.
Brian Fletcher
"Jane_Doe2351" <bw...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1146757049.3...@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
Exactly how I would have put it, if I had have improved my educational
standards.
:-)..
Same destination, different track.
Should empower those of less intellectual capacity to "see things" ;-).
BOfL
gibbs
>> > For something to be "important", one have a goal in mind. *If you want
>> > to avoid injury*, it is imporant to put on your shoes. All of this
>> > relates to the cause and effect of this mathematical machine we call
>> > the universe.
>> That's a pretty big leap to say that because a lot of the universe can be
>> described mathematically it is a mathematical machine. I can describe a
>> lot
>> of the universe with words. Is the universe a dictionary, too?
> That is a false analogy. It is more proper to say that the universe is
> a *machine describable with words*.
Who decides that this is more proper? And if the universe actually is a "a
machine describable with words", who is to say that that description isn't
better than "a machine describable by mathematics." If that's the case, we
can say the universe is a word machine?
Of course, this raises the question, "So what?"
Sean
"Jane_Doe2351" <bw...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1146757049.3...@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
>
>>Therefore my argument is invalid. Am I correct?
>
> I'm replying in reverse order, because the rest of my post only
> involves elaboration that might be boring. The part of your
> proclamation that "the world is black-and-white, and there can be no
> gray area" can't be validated or invalidated. It's another in a long
> line of unresovable claims revolving around humans achieving certainty
> or accessing absolute reality. However, in the context of pragmatism,
> your viewpoint might be more useful or reliable in certain situations
> than some other opinions. But when based on the idea that physics and
> the actual world are interchangeable, or are one and the same, it can
> be undermined.
>
Yes, iow the question itself, or premise, is the problem.
If one does ask useful questions one will not recieve useful answers.
>>Let me see if I understand you. You are saying that
>> because our consciousness of the world is not the
>> world itself, physics can only be a mathematical
>> description of what weare conscious of, and not
>> the world.
>
> Early natural science was indeed a descriptive inventory of the content
> and dynamics of the phenomenal world (i.e., reality as perceived by
> humans). But contemporary physics in large part goes beyond those
> appearances, engaging in Kant's allowance that you can *try* to get at
> the *thing-in-itself* via reason (matured into today's explanatory
> theories that make empirical predictions for testing [see Dan Lloyd
> quote at bottom]). *Try* is the key word; such a knowledge quest is
> asymptotic, as Karl Popper pointed out, it approaches but doesn't
> intersect with the Absolute (if there even is any ultimate character of
> Nature).
>
Yes. TRY try try and try ...... maths is maths and never will be the world,
never will be reality never will be anything but a chalk mark on a black
board ... a small part of the world which can lead to a larger part of
"understanding" ... however that does not mean that math and number and
geometry do not or cannot represent the underlying "laws" of how the world
presents moves and has it's BEing.
So the issue is often the utility of things being misapplied. One would not
use a paintbrush as a hammer with much success upon a nail.
> Abstract language is a useful tool for postulating about the noumenal
> side of the world, but it can never be complete and flawless because it
> is only a symbolic simulation rather than the thing-in-itself. As an
> example of how the essentially functionalist approach of physics can
> eliminate much detail from even an observable epistemic level, take the
> case of statistical physics when applied to society or economics: it
> abstracts away all aspects of the human world except the dynamics and
> magnitudes that are of concern to that discipline, reducing organisms
> to mathematical points and intelligence to randomness in computer
> representations.
iow redustionism etc tends to break things down and views with isolation as
opposed to holistically. Because a "scientist" doesn't think something is
part of a cause/effect model then that aspect will be ignored untill it hits
them in the face ... in the meantime all sorts of false consclusions are
drawn from the remnant data sometimes called "cutting edge research studies"
......
As Jenny Hogan put it in a *New Scientist* article:
>
> "In the gas model, people exchange money in random interactions, much
> as atoms exchange energy when they collide. While economists' models
> traditionally regard humans as rational beings who always make
> intelligent decisions, econophysicists argue that in large systems the
> behaviour of each individual is influenced by so many factors that the
> net result is random, so it makes sense to treat people like atoms in a
> gas. The analogy also holds because money is like energy, in that it
> has to be conserved. 'It's like a fluid that flows in interactions,
> it's not created or destroyed, only redistributed,' says Yakovenko."
>
> So the world behind phenomenal appearances could be much richer in
> detail than our theories or noumenations allow, whether they involve
> the micro realm of quantum physics or the macrocosmic realm of
> spacetime. Thus, this uncertainty in philosophy and the potential folly
> of believing that any human or human labor can omnisciently grasp an
> absolute nature of reality.
>
Yes, for sure that's the way it is ..... gravity always was ..... Newton's
maths made absolutely no difference ... and in fact is not even accurate in
all cases of reality.
> Dan Lloyd -- "New cosmology and new physics gave European
> intelligentsia a galloping case of what we would now call modern
> science. In a sense, Descartes' worst fantasies were unfolding: What
> everyone thought to be the case was turning out to be systematically
> and pervasively false. The forces and laws that governed the physical
> world were discovered to be quite different from the folk-inspired and
> Aristotelian theories that had seemed so obvious. And so it goes on to
> this day: The world-model in one's mind is at best a radical
> translation of the distal energies of reality." [Popping the Thought
> Balloon]
>
> _
>
thanks wonderful post & quotes, and a keeper, cheers
Sean
> Sean wrote:
>> "Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:1146701701.1...@j73g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>> > Emotions are controlled by the limbic system of the brain and depend on
>> > one's neurotransmitter levels. The wiring of the limbic system and the
>> > molecular structure of the neurotransmitters can be described
>> > mathematically.
>> >
>>
>> mmmmm, well I didn't ask for the "wiring" or structure to be described
>> mathematically.
>>
>> I asked ...... show me mathematically the definition of "having one's
>> breath
>> taken away at the sheer beauty of a rainbow in a particular moment."
>
> "Having one's breath taken away at the sheer beauty of a rainbow in a
> particular moment" is a property. Actually, it's a feeling.
>
yes, it;s also an expereince of reality, the same as "the world is black and
white" is a report on an experience/pervception/feeling of reality.
> Since it is phrased with words already defined, there can be no
> definition of it. It involves someone seeing a rainbow and feeling a
> certain way.
>
And that is how different from you seeing the world and saying the world is
black and white?
What if the "world" you see is also doing the same thing, ie experiencing
itself sometimes feeling like a rainbow and at other times being a
lightening strom or hurricane?
> Emotions are influenced and facilitated by the limbic system. I have
> already shown that brain activity can be described mathematically. I
> believe that neural processing is the *essence* of this feeling of
> "having one's breath taken away".
>
> It sounds to me like you are asking for something more. Do you believe
> that this feeling is *different* from neural processing? If so, why?
>
Consider .... a printout from a earthquake station is not an earthquake
itself, but a report. A building falling over 100 miles from an earthquake
epicentre is not an earthquake "happening" in reality but an effect of an
earthquake already ended.
If u could see the neuraltramsmitters operating in the brain during an
emotional/feeling period with their electircal and chemical exchanges you
would see what loooks like an electrical storm on earth ... clouds
[chemicals] are swirling, lightening is happening across synapses.
Now when people look out to sea at an afternoon storm .. or people put
shutters on their homes before a hurricane do they say that these storms are
the CAUSE of these storms, or do they say and accpet that they are an effect
of many different weather patterns/responses over a period of time?
Obviously the later .....
But in the middle of a hurricane it really doesn;t matter what finctions
created it, the priorioty is deal with it .... KNOWING it will pass ....
Emotions are NO different imho, and any report by science saying this is not
so is simply by people who are not seeing clearly and not looking at the
whole picture regarding consciousness, emotions, bodily reactions, etc etc
etc etc ..... a very very long list indeed.
>> anyway .... what do you mean by "controlled by" ??? ..........
>
> Maybe I should rephrase it. What we call *emotions* -- states of mind
> that influence behavior -- are made possible and facilitated by the
> limbic system.
>
A strong wind in a hurricane will whip up a sheet fo roofing iron and slice
a persons head off.
That is a "state of mind" influencing another behaviour or "property" [ as u
said in the beginning] or another expereince/action/result
Once chemical reactions are occurring in the brain be they drug induced,
sleep induced, or anger/love emotions induced then there will be other short
term and long term outcomes that follow a particular set of laws and
possibiliities .......
That does not mean that the "emotions" were created by the mathematics of
chemical reactions and electrical charges across synapses.
Brain scans are fantastic and wonderful and useful .... but that does not
mean that the "interprtations" feelings, indications, ideas, theories and
presumptions by the medical scientists are always accurate and true.
They too have thier own "beliefs" of reality that they bring to the
investigations and studies.
>> what science proved that chemical reactions created emotional responses
>> versus an emotion/thought created a sympathetic emotional response
>> reflected
>> in the chemical reactions?
>
> We live in a world of apparently unbreakable physical laws. By
> inductive reasoning, we predict that these laws also hold unbreakably
> in the human brain. Neuroscience has shown us the details of what
> physically takes place here.
No it hasn;t ..... it has shown some things ..... "neuroscience" is an
interpretation of those few things .... *it* cannot see all the things that
physically take place .
Why make a God of neuroscience when it is still but a wee inexperienced
child????
<smile>
The brain consists entirely of neurons
> that form synaptic connections with each other. When a neuron sends a
> signal, it causes molecules called neurotransmitters to be released
> into the synapse. If enough neurotransmitters bind to the receptors of
> the next neuron, this next neuron sends a signal, and so on. That's
> about as much as I know about it.
>
That's about as much as neuroscience knows <smile> nah being silly ;-))
Before any science dude came up with the idea of a brain and what it did,
there was discussion about emotions and the mind in
"spiritual/philosophical" circles.
Cosmic cinsciousness has been comapred to an expereince with Universal Mind.
What does that mean?
People have had clear "knowledge" that their child or spouse has been killed
on the other side of the world ..... only to wait several weeks for the news
to physically get back to them.
How does a "brain" do this ...... how does a brain create chemicals of
sadness and knowledge that one schild is dead, and one KNOWS this, and a
short time later the timing of the event is confirmed?
What does Maths have to do with these things that happen every day on this
planet, and why does science as a whole ignore such reality and provable
expereinces?
> I don't understand the possibility you mention after "versus". Can you
> reword it?
>
OK
>> versus an emotion/thought created a sympathetic emotional response
>> reflected
>> in the chemical reactions?
all that means is describong a chicken and egg senario .... science has NOT
proven that brain fucntions are the "cause" of emotions nor do they show
they "controll" them either ......
THEREFORE why could it no be as feasible "scientifically" at this stage to
view the porcess as one where the brains activiities are a physical response
to something else happneing somehwere else but somehow connected to the
"brain" in a way that science has as yet NOT physically determined
.........???????
hope those ideas help in some way ... cheers sean
darwinist
> I want to hear your thoughts. This topic is very imporant to me.
>
> My claim is that since the laws of physics can be stated in
> mathematical terms, and mathematics is black-and-white, the world is
> black-and-white, and there can be no gray area.
>
> All objections are welcome.
There are two objections I think you need to consider:
- The laws of physics change.
- Everything else is less precise than physics.
If the universe is black and white in reality, it's grey in our
dealings with it and always will be.
In other words, for a person to have the most certain chance of living
well, the world must be treated as full of uncertainties,
probabilities, and gradients. A certain, categorical approach to life
gives intellectual comfort in the way that relatively nutrient-free
fast-food gives gastronomical comfort (or not, depending on your taste).
Sean
"Sean" <santimva...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:ysmdnQmuMrH...@inspired.net.au...
>
> "Jane_Doe2351" <bw...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:1146757049.3...@u72g2000cwu.googlegroups.com...
>> Mike H wrote:
>>
>>>Therefore my argument is invalid. Am I correct?
>>
>> I'm replying in reverse order, because the rest of my post only
>> involves elaboration that might be boring. The part of your
>> proclamation that "the world is black-and-white, and there can be no
>> gray area" can't be validated or invalidated. It's another in a long
>> line of unresovable claims revolving around humans achieving certainty
>> or accessing absolute reality. However, in the context of pragmatism,
>> your viewpoint might be more useful or reliable in certain situations
>> than some other opinions. But when based on the idea that physics and
>> the actual world are interchangeable, or are one and the same, it can
>> be undermined.
>>
>
> Yes, iow the question itself, or premise, is the problem.
>
sorry obviously
> If one does *not* ask useful questions one will not recieve useful
> answers.
>
Sean
If science etc have at present no realistic claim to all knowingness and
accuracy of the workings of the world, and neuroscince etc etc .... than a
sub-claim postulate such as the world is black and white, and therefore
maths can accurately describe that black/whiteness clearly ... is a flawed
idea [ conclusion ] to run with.
As such there is a lot of "gray" areas, and an open minded view of the
world, and the antics of humans [ inclduing scientists/theologians] would
shown a world of indescribable colour. ala a rainbow of endless variations
of shadings.
Mind you in the correct context, E = MC^ is still true mathematically. And a
triangle corners adds up to 180 degrees on a flat plane.
AND thew angle between the sunlight and the eye of the beholder of a rainbow
is 42 degrees. <smile>
Cheers
ZerkonX
> mathematics is black-and-white..
Really? What is the decimal equivalent of 1/3?
How many hours are in a day? Days in a year?
Mathematics is a convenient way to pretend black and white.
Mike H
> On Wed, 03 May 2006 05:57:36 -0700, Mike H wrote:
>
> > mathematics is black-and-white..
>
> Really? What is the decimal equivalent of 1/3?
The decimal equivalent is an infinite expansion of 3's: 0.333... to
infinity or 0.3 with a line over it. There is no gray area in this
term.
> How many hours are in a day? Days in a year?
Compare your questions to the following: What is the name of an inner
planet? How many people are in a country? In these examples, as well as
yours, there are implicit assumptions about the uniqueness of the
answers for the objects in question. This does not prove gray area.
Mike H
and will try to answer your statements as best I can.
In other words, contemporary physics tries to make statements about the
noumenon?
I have read Dan Lloyd's quote but I still don't understand. I don't see
*why* physics would try to transcend the phenomenal world.
In other words, gray area results from uncertainty in philosophy about
the noumenon. Am I right?
Mike H
> "Mike H" <mike...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1146787946.2...@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com...
> > a *machine describable with words*.
>
> Who decides that this is more proper? And if the universe actually is a "a
> machine describable with words", who is to say that that description isn't
> better than "a machine describable by mathematics." If that's the case, we
> can say the universe is a word machine?
>
> Of course, this raises the question, "So what?"
Truth isn't decided by agreement of the people.
Mike H
> ps oops forgot summary .... so my basic opinion and conclusions is
>
> If science etc have at present no realistic claim to all knowingness and
> accuracy of the workings of the world, and neuroscince etc etc .... than a
> sub-claim postulate such as the world is black and white, and therefore
> maths can accurately describe that black/whiteness clearly ... is a flawed
> idea [ conclusion ] to run with.
>
> As such there is a lot of "gray" areas, and an open minded view of the
> world, and the antics of humans [ inclduing scientists/theologians] would
> shown a world of indescribable colour. ala a rainbow of endless variations
> of shadings.
Let me see if I understand you here. Gray area results from
*uncertainty* about what we don't know. Since we don't know everything
about the brain, there is a lot of gray area about how it functions. Am
I right?
Mike H
> Mike H wrote:
> > I want to hear your thoughts. This topic is very imporant to me.
> >
> > My claim is that since the laws of physics can be stated in
> > mathematical terms, and mathematics is black-and-white, the world is
> > black-and-white, and there can be no gray area.
> >
> > All objections are welcome.
>
> There are two objections I think you need to consider:
> - The laws of physics change.
> - Everything else is less precise than physics.
How do the laws of physics change? What do you mean by "everything
else"? Doesn't the universe consist entirely of particles?
> If the universe is black and white in reality, it's grey in our
> dealings with it and always will be.
I think that may be true.
> In other words, for a person to have the most certain chance of living
> well, the world must be treated as full of uncertainties,
> probabilities, and gradients. A certain, categorical approach to life
> gives intellectual comfort in the way that relatively nutrient-free
> fast-food gives gastronomical comfort (or not, depending on your taste).
Can you give an example of how we think with gray area in dealing with
the world?
Sean
> Sean wrote:
>> ps oops forgot summary .... so my basic opinion and conclusions is
>>
>> If science etc have at present no realistic claim to all knowingness and
>> accuracy of the workings of the world, and neuroscince etc etc .... than
>> a
>> sub-claim postulate such as the world is black and white, and therefore
>> maths can accurately describe that black/whiteness clearly ... is a
>> flawed
>> idea [ conclusion ] to run with.
>>
>> As such there is a lot of "gray" areas, and an open minded view of the
>> world, and the antics of humans [ inclduing scientists/theologians] would
>> shown a world of indescribable colour. ala a rainbow of endless
>> variations
>> of shadings.
>
> Let me see if I understand you here. Gray area results from
> *uncertainty* about what we don't know. Since we don't know everything
> about the brain, there is a lot of gray area about how it functions. Am
> I right?
>
Well, except for the uncertainty factor, yes I'd say you are right that you
can't be right from a scientific or mathematical perspective that the world
is black and white and provable by maths.
Jane_Doe2351
>In other words, contemporary physics tries to
> make statements about the noumenon?
Let me start with a quote from Robert P. Crease's article *This Is Your
Philosophy* (which concerned a poll taken of physicists), so it will be
a bit clearer to us that *Kant's lingering ghost* doesn't exclusively
own terms like *noumenon* or *noumenal*, that they have been borrowed
over the decades to refer to theories concerning areas that are far
less empirical than what some other disciplines deal with. Yet still
serving as pretty much a useful counterpart to *phenomenal* or
*phenomenon*:
"But a tension lurks in the meaning of 'real'. People who insist that
real things are the sort incorporated into the fabric of human
experience - i.e. order as human beings experience it - adhere to a
brand of philosophy that has been called phenomenal realism. They view
what things are like, apart from that experience, as unknowable.
Meanwhile, those who argue that we can, in fact, come to know something
about structures that underlie the fabric of human experience - i.e.
nature's order - adhere to what is known as noumenal realism. These
structures may be material (Democritean) or abstract and formal
(Platonic), such as (in this view) electrons and protons. What is truly
real - for noumenal realists - are particles and forces, say, rather
than sticks and stones. In this view, what human beings experience is
not of reality as such, but rather the means and clues by which we can
know underlying, fundamental structures that are not given in
experience."
Although scientific antirealists would protest that physics theories
don't necessarily correspond to anything existent, scientific realists
--or in this case *noumenal realists*-- feel otherwise.
Philosophically, science is perhaps not a smoothly unified camp across
the board, no matter how much Edward O. Wilson has written about
*consilience* in the recent past and Hilary Putnam (before his
conversion to neo-pragmatism) did about the unification of science
decades ago.
Neil Campbell: "Unfortunately, it soon appeared as though the
anticipated unification of science was overly optimistic . . . . As Ian
Hacking has suggested, the practice of science has shown more of a
tendency toward fragmentation and compartmentalisation, with different
areas of science paying little attention to one another."
>I have read Dan Lloyd's quote but I still don't
> understand. I don't see *why* physics would try
> to transcend the phenomenal world.
A quote I saved from an interview of physicist Julian Barbour: "Physics
is an attempt to create a picture of reality as we should see it if we
could, somehow, step outside of ourselves."
Note that he says *attempt*, and not that physics has literal or total
capacity to do that. Here's a second Robert P. Crease quote that
elaborates on another of the multiple philosophical perspectives that
wrangle with each other in science:
"Critical realism - [John] Polkinghorne's pet idea - is a term that
covers several different perspectives, combining aspects of phenomenal
and noumenal realism. What these perspectives share in general is the
view that what we directly perceive and know is not the real object
itself - an electron, say - but rather a sign or datum by which we can
infer the existence and properties of the object. These inferences,
however, may often fail to capture the object's details and even its
essence. Polkinghorne's views fit this loose orientation. By realism,
he says he means that science "faithfully represents" the world, giving
an "increasingly verisimilitudinous account of what the physical world
is like". This does not mean that Polkinghorne thinks that the world is
intuitively graspable - after all, he admits that it contains strange
entities like quarks and superstrings, and that mathematics is its
natural language. And to explain what he means by the word critical,
Polkinghorne says that "scientific understanding is not just read out
of nature but...attained by a creative interpretive process".
>In other words, gray area results from
> uncertainty in philosophy about the noumenon.
> Am I right?
Ultimate reality might or might not have gray areas. But in the case of
critical realism above, you can see how ambiguity could arise by this
"combining aspects of phenomenal and noumenal realism", of trying to
straddle both sides of the fence. Same with the conflict between holism
and reductionism (i.e., are emergent levels truly autonomous or is the
source of causal efficacy still confined to basal levels?) IOW, it's in
the ignorance, uncertainties, and debates concerning ultimate reality
as manifested in the phenomenal and linguistic representations /
explanations of humans that we can at least say *grayness* arises.
One more extraction (below) concerning a sub-element of another brand
of critical realism, taken from a Wikipedia entry on critical realism.
The crux is the last part of the paragraph, only mentioned here as an
additional item concerning potentially conflicting divisions in science
philosophy: "Thus, non-realisation of a posited mechanism can not (in
contrast to the claim of positivists) be taken to signify its
non-existence." Which is to say, lots of luck to any of us wanting to
restrain semi-metaphysical adventures like superstrings or M-theory in
physics. "You're just arguing from the stance of one of multiple
interpretations of science," would be the protest.
"[Roy Bhaskar's] Transcendental Realism refers to the fact that in
order for scientific investigation to take place, the object of that
investigation must have real, manipulable, internal mechanisms that can
be triggered to produce particular outcomes. This is what we do when we
conduct experiments. This stands in contrast to empiricist scientists'
claim that all scientists can do is observe the relationship between
cause and effect. The implication of this is that science should be
understood as an ongoing process in which scientists improve the
concepts they use to understand the mechanisms that they study. It
should not, in contrast to the claim of empiricists, be about the
identification of a coincidence between a postulated 'independent
variable' and 'dependent variable'. Positivism/falsification are also
rejected due to the observation that it is highly-plausible that a
mechanism will exist but either a) go un-activated, b) be activated,
but imperceived, c) be activated, but counteracted by other mechanisms,
which result in it having unpredictable effects. Thus, non-realisation
of a posited mechanism can not (in contrast to the claim of
positivists) be taken to signify its non-existence."
-
gibbs
> Let me see if I understand you here. Gray area results from
> *uncertainty* about what we don't know. Since we don't know everything
> about the brain, there is a lot of gray area about how it functions. Am
> I right?
What exactly do you mean by "black and white" and "gray", anyway? It seems
that everyone replying to you knows exactly what you mean, but it isn't
clear to me what you mean.
gibbs
It depends on what you mean by "truth".
darwinist
> darwinist wrote:
> > Mike H wrote:
> > > I want to hear your thoughts. This topic is very imporant to me.
> > >
> > > My claim is that since the laws of physics can be stated in
> > > mathematical terms, and mathematics is black-and-white, the world is
> > > black-and-white, and there can be no gray area.
> > >
> > > All objections are welcome.
> >
> > There are two objections I think you need to consider:
> > - The laws of physics change.
> > - Everything else is less precise than physics.
>
> How do the laws of physics change?
Because they are intellectual/mathematical models which we test against
reality, and they are invariably found wanting, although some of them
are very useful.
> What do you mean by "everything
> else"? Doesn't the universe consist entirely of particles?
Yes, but in combination they display new properties and present new
probelms, which in general can't be as accurately solved as physical
equations.
> > If the universe is black and white in reality, it's grey in our
> > dealings with it and always will be.
>
> I think that may be true.
>
> > In other words, for a person to have the most certain chance of living
> > well, the world must be treated as full of uncertainties,
> > probabilities, and gradients. A certain, categorical approach to life
> > gives intellectual comfort in the way that relatively nutrient-free
> > fast-food gives gastronomical comfort (or not, depending on your taste).
>
> Can you give an example of how we think with gray area in dealing with
> the world?
Sure, what should you eat today?
darwinist
It's not the uniqueness, the issue is the lack of mathematical
accuracy. A year is not exactly 365.25 days, pi is not exactly 3.14159
> > Mathematics is a convenient way to pretend black and white.
I agree with ZerkonX on this point. Mathematics can be an extremely
convenient way of pretending black and white, and that tells us
something about humans. I think it tells us that our pretensions can be
useful, even if many of them are not. Or perhaps it tells us that even
our best theories are, in fact, simply the more useful of our
pretensions.