Re: Reality of Abstractions

On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 4:55 AM, Brett Hall <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
>
> Hi there!
>
> I have struggled with much of what you have written. Your sentence
> fragments might be better expressed if they were clearly stand-alone
> sentences, or your list was in more simple point form. But this is largely
> my problem, I suppose. That said, I'll do my best to understand as well as I
> could...
>
>
>
> On 06/02/2013, at 22:58, "hibbsa" [email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > By far Reality of Abstractions is my favourite BoI chapter,
> >
> One of mine too. My "take away" is that this idea of "abstract things are
> real" is neither dualism in the Cartesian sense nor monism in the
> Spinozistic sense. The abstract stuff is not altogether separate from the
> physical stuff. Indeed the opposite. Abstract "stuff", like knowledge, is
> instantiated somewhere physical...and yet it is not itself something
> physical. Knowledge cannot be said to be "just" atoms moving through the
> void "just" obeying the laws of physics. To understand how atoms move
> through the void while obeying the laws of physics you have to understand
> high level explanations. In order to explain anything you actually invoke
> abstract stuff - which is real.
>
> > particularly
> > Deutsch's treatment of the layering or levels of abstractions as when
> > interrelated.
> >
> > Purely for their pertenance to what I will be wanting to say (i.e. why
> > this post ) I illustrate some strands Deutsch said or I picked up maybe
> > mistakenly
> >
> > - that in some sense, different manifestations of the same explanation
> > (in terms of explaining the same thing) can exist on different layers.
> I'm not clear on what this means. My guess is that you mean something
> like: the same explanation can be instantiated in many different ways. So
> for example it can exist in the mind, in a book, or in a simulation in a
> computer. Is that right?
>
>
> >
> > - Apparent paradoxes resolved by layering in which explanations are
> > simultaneously the same yet different.
> This, I do not understand. I do know that physical reality contains no
> paradoxes. Isn't that true? Paradoxes arise because there is some limitation
> in our explanations. "This statement is false" and such things - how are
> they resolved? Explanations which are "simultaneously the same yet
> different" could be a paradox, I suppose. Is this in BoI somewhere? I
> couldn't find anything.
>
> >
> > - Speculative / personal-intuition of what means the whole 'stack' or
> > 'spectrum' of layers or levels of some interrelated thing
> >
> > ------as the true or complete or objective form of an explanation of
> > some thing
> I do not know what this means. I know that the philosophy underpinning FoR
> and BoI is realist. So that is a commitment to an ontological reality. As
> for "complete"...form of explanation: well we never get to complete, do we?
> Or if we do, we cannot know. The whole point of infinite progress is we can
> never "complete" our quest for knowledge.
>
>
> >
> > ------all the properties described or inherent in the levels and
> > relations between them
>
> Which part of the previous stuff you have written does this fragment
> connect to? As it is, it seems to contain a verb and an object with no
> subject. I'm unsure about it...
>
> >
> > ----- -e.g. commonalities, regularities, upward/downward inheritences,
> > emergences, convergences, divergences)
> I'm not sure what that means either. Again, the full sentence written out
> in full, connected perhaps by clauses and commas rather than in this list of
> fragments might help comprehension. Or, indeed single sentences separated by
> full stops.
> >
> > [Note: just to say again that all the above essentially for illustrative
> > purposes....to help you recall and visualize Deutsch's arguments in that
> > chapter, faithful to your not my level of understanding]
> I really liked the argument, in that chapter, against reductionism (and
> holism) and the strange "moral overtones" invoked by scientists (or
> otherwise) that suggest science "should be" one of those. I think that is a
> key part of this chapter too.
>
> >
> > AND NOW MY BUILD UP QUESTIONS.
> >
> > Q1: Is the extent the objective existence of an explanation on or across
> > objectively real layers or levels (of reality) dependent/proportionate
> > with the extent, depth and reach overwhich it is an explanation of
> > objective reality?
> I do not understand the question. Maybe someone else does and could help.
> I'll ask some questions about your questions:
>
> By "objective existence of an explanation" do you just mean "an
> explanation"? After all, explanations are real, right? What other kind of
> existence could they have? Only subjective? I think, fwiw, there is indeed
> such a thing as subjective existence which is just as real as objective
> existence, in the ontological (what reality consists of) sense. I'm unsure
> if this is what you mean by objective though. So let's say you're talking
> about an explanation written down on piece of paper. Let's say, for
> argument's sake, it's general relativity in a book.
>
> Now this explanation "on or across objectively real layers or levels (of
> reality)" - does this mean that the explanation (book on general relativity
> in my example) exists in many universes? In other words, it is an example of
> how knowledge gives some structure to the multiverse? General relativity,
> the explanation, exists in many universes. Yes. Indeed its physical
> instantiations aren't just books but would also include technologies that
> have arisen, and exist because of general relativity. So GPS and similar
> technologies: where they are found in the multiverse, there is, to use your
> words, " the objective existence of an explanation on or across objectively
> real layers or levels (of reality)". Layers I have trouble with. If you
> mean: both minds, books and technologies like GPS systems, then that's
> correct. And we expect minds, books and technologies containing the
> explanation of general relativity to be more common in universes that are
> the future of our own.
>
> Is such an explanation, like general relativity, "proportionate with the
> extent, depth and reach overwhich it is an explanation of objective
> reality"? I think: yes.
>
> So if I have interpreted your question correctly I think the answer is
> yes. But I interpret the question to mean something like: are true
> explanations more common (i.e have higher measure) in the multiverse than
> particular false ones? Yes.
>
> Overall, false explanations are more common but for any given false
> explanation, their measure in the multiverse will be less common than true
> ones. For example, we expect that more people in the multiverse know about
> quantum theory than know about how Apollo carries the Sun across the sky.
>
> >
> > Q1: Does all of this apply to philosophical explanations? Does the
> > PopperDeutsch philosophy exist on objectively real layers of abstraction
> > to the exist the philosophy 'touches' (describes, is, navigates,
> > reflects, etc) on objective[ly true] reality? Both in its whole and in
> > its parts?
> Yes. Because knowledge can only grow in the way Popper and Deutsch
> explain, people will gradually learn this. It will gain more and more of a
> prominent "structure" in the multiverse. We will notice its *physical*
> effects on larger and larger scales across time and space and throughout the
> multiverse. Ideas like justificationism will decline and so will stuff like
> Kuhn's idea about the framework, and so too will astrology and homeopathy,
> etc. What is closer to true, works better. What is false, will be discarded.
> Because it will turn out to be more and more useless as better and better
> (truer and truer) things are discovered.
>
> >
> > LEADING TO MY ULTIMATE QUESTION:
> >
> > If a component of the Deutsch Philosophy, say regarding Foundations
> >
> You mean his rejection of foundations?
>
> > or
> > the Conjecture or Refutation (or as a pair), can exist
> >
> > on multiple
> > objectively real levels,
> >
> I'm still unsure what you mean by "levels". Can you provide an example of
> a specific explanation or philosophy that exists on "multiple objectively
> real levels"? Tell me what the explanation is and what two possible levels
> it exists upon.
>
> Also, can you clarify what objective means? And what real means? And so
> what objectively real means? Does it differ from how these words are used in
> FoR or BoI?
>
> What I am getting at it is whether you think there are subjectively real
> levels. If so, what are examples of these?
>
> > and if each level can differently manifest that
> > same explanation, then does its significance/importance/application to
> > the 'human condition' also apply differently by level?
> I don't understand this, of course...because I'm still not sure about
> "levels".
>
> >
> > If that is so, doesn't that mean that:
> >
> > - the level of abstraction that poppper applied the philosophy he had
> > corrected, was one or a subset of a larger potential set, thus a choice
> > requiring its own explanation. Unless....
> All philosophies are explanations and all require explanations. It's
> infinite in all directions. Even if we do not have an adequate explanation
> yet...that's good! More progress is required, then.
>
> Also, yes, epistemology is part of a set, or class, of other explanations,
> which are false. For example there is the false idea of JTB and there are
> "guesses and criticisms". They are both part of the set of "ideas" or
> perhaps even "philosophies". One is true. One is false. The set of true
> ideas will always be smaller than the set of true *and* false ideas.
>
> >
> > - popper analysed and reapplied the corrected philosophy at the same
> > level of abstraction conceived by the early pioneers of science at the
> > time of their attempts at philosophy of science. But then...wouldn't
> > that equivalence require an explaination also?
> I think the answer is yes. I am hedging with the "think" because I am not
> at all confident I understand the question. Can you rephrase this and
> perhaps provide a concrete example? Thanks!
>
> Brett.
>

Hey thanks for having a bash and I'm sorry it was dense.

The upshot - or what I'm driving at - is that Popper's key early
insights/corrections - under headings like Foundations,
Justifications, Authority, Explanation, Criticism - are dealt with at
a higher level of abstraction by Science than individual rationality,
peer-to-peer rationality. So there's a levels of abstraction mismatch.
With far reaching ramifications.
The explanation of this is counter-intuitive....I'll maybe have a bash
at some point. Once again thanks for wading through my poor
communication skills.