Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk (Oliver Sparrow)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!pipex!peernews.demon.co.uk!chatham.demon.co.uk!ohgs
Subject: Re: When is a simulation of an X an X?
References: <D2yqLF.AM6@metronet.com> <Pine.HPP.3.91.950127181756.4921B-100000@acg60.wfunet.wfu.edu> <1995Jan28.043841.15943@news.media.mit.edu> <D34GDv.B3@metronet.com> <3gjeqf$ptk@news.cs.tu-berlin.de>
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Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 09:07:13 +0000
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Our preceptions are embedded in a number of different, loosely-coupled
systems of ordering. One cluster of ordering is primarily internal: how I
manage and think about things. Other systems are societal; yet others are
connected with the physical universe. These systems are reasonably (but far
from exhaustively) self-consistent. (* note)

Many seeming paradoxes, crises of epistemology and sterile debates have their
roots dug into this multi-layered structure. When we talk about the charge on 
the electron, we are using a model of how things work to focus our attention 
on  one feature of exogenous reality, such that a specific quality of that 
reality can be brought into our model. We set up a mechanism to touch  
something highly specific about this reality, bringing it into the ordering 
system which we have created. We measure; and assume that we have touched 
reality. We should look behind us when we do this, however, at the societal, 
economic and biological realities which have brought the reqisite matter and 
energy together in order to make this determination possible; and the highly 
abstracty quality of the information which is derived. What is, just is; and 
what we make of it is tangled up int he frameworks of interpretation that we 
use (and which make use of us.)

When we talk about the authorship of a painting (or a price on a screen; or an 
expression on a face) we are discussing something which is as real as the 
charge on the electron. They are irreducible components of the reality 
which changes how things are: they are needed as components of any 
explanation that we bring forward of how things work. These are, however, 
"things" only insofar as they play a role in the pattern of ordering which is 
created by human, biological or other high-level abstract systems. There is a 
fundamental property - let us say,"smile" - which operates within systems 
within which (teleologicaly) it plays a part. In such a system, the thought 
"he is smiling" plays a profound role in altering behavious, shunting hapless 
electrons around and generally performing as a high-level bundle of 
abstractions. Beyond such a system, there is no concept "smile": it exists 
only within a particular frame of reference and has no validity beyond it. It 
is meaningful only so long as the symbolic system of which it is a part 
operates and when it does not operate, it is not.

These two meanings of 'real' cause profound discomfort to people who prefer 
their reality to come in an unambiguous vanilla flavour. Alas for them, 
however, it does not. The bulk of reality, of that which alters our 
behaviour, is both the means by which we think and see and the subject of our 
thought and perception. In this category, "real" means that which functions in 
a given circumstance: that which it is useful to call 'real'. 

When we reduce matters to fundamentals, we lose a great deal. We cannot find 
"market" or "smile" amongst the hadrons and leptons. That is to say, we cannot 
easily come up with a theory which models all that we observe of these busy 
little particles and which also offers a framework in which we can capture what 
we see of the higher level abstractions which manage our daily lives. The 
theories can be made compatible - and one can go down from the complex system 
to the simpler, explaining why this or that electron is being shovled about - 
but there is a conceptual diode which prevents matters from going the other way 
around.

The question which underpins this thread and that of its pareent is how one 
could tell if a symbol was a true symbol in certain circumstances. The 
implication is that there is a fundamental Truth against which this little 
instance of 'true' is set. By definition, however, a symbol is an appeal to a 
structure of ordering: a key in the lock of a model. This implies that it lies 
within this framework of relativist truth. The question is not meaningful: it 
is to ask if skylarks should dream of drowning.


 (* Note: I am not say ing that physical reality - for example - is less
    than self-consistent; but only that our models of it are open to 
    improvement.)

 _________________________________________________

  Oliver Sparrow
  ohgs@chatham.demon.co.uk
