#JuarreroBook Chapter 6 Part 1 There's a lot in this chapter, and some of it I find hard to understand. So I'd like to split things up. We are now on context dependent constraints, the nature of which is to "take conditions away from independence" The...
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@[email protected] @NicoleCRust @[email protected] @dsmith @awaisaftab @uh 4/n and very last thought: it’s a very long time ago that I read the Kauffmann book, but I remember the point of it as being that evolution alone is insufficient to explain life and life forms as we see them, and that further constraints on generating structure are required to render it as anything other than wildly improbable - cue emergence and complexity. So he presumably thought example shows meaningful constraints in action?
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@[email protected] @NicoleCRust @[email protected] @dsmith @uh ..5/5 which links to Dylan’s point?
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@[email protected] @UlrikeHahn @NicoleCRust @[email protected] @awaisaftab @uh
I like the term “constraint satisfaction” as it captures how conditions/experience can move an individual toward a regulated state (not unlike the synchronizing clocks).
cf: Blair describes causal role of SES, cortisone, etc., in emotional reactivity, school readiness.
Blair, C. (2002). School readiness: Integrating cognition and emotion in a neurobio conceptualization of children's functioning at school entry. The Amer Psych, 57, 111-127.
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@dsmith @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @[email protected] @awaisaftab @uh Dylan, I like the notion of constraint satisfaction in many contexts, but I think my specific problem here with these three examples is identifying what exactly *is* the constraint and what is its nature.
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@UlrikeHahn @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @[email protected] @awaisaftab @uh
I think I understand this difficulty. Not easy to describe a constraint... What caused your window to blow in, a specific wind or the entire storm? Any attempt to explain needs to account the big-picture storm, but then the explanation smacks of description.
Solution?.. I think the value of group discussion is that each of you brings diverse experience that can help all to "pan out" via concrete examples.
The Blair article is brilliant, btw.
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@UlrikeHahn @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @[email protected] @awaisaftab @uh
Back to the clocks... Any one of the clocks cannot continue to do just what it was doing because the other clocks create conditions (constraints) that keep it from doing so. That is, the other clocks are "canalizing" the behaviour of the clock in question.
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@dsmith @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @[email protected] @awaisaftab @uh
or is the resonator (the shelf) the constraint?
or is the fact that you cannot maintain the interfering vibrations the constraint?
and isn't the presence of the resonator also a context?
or is the context the thing that provides the physical manifestation of the constraint?
?????
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@NicoleCRust @[email protected] @UlrikeHahn @awaisaftab @uh This recent overview paper summarises a bit of that discussion and gives some of the key references on the first paragraph or so of section 3
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@UlrikeHahn @dsmith @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @awaisaftab @uh @dsmith @[email protected] @UlrikeHahn @NicoleCRust @awaisaftab @uh The worry raised by critics of DST in CogSci is that talk of constraints, etc., is at best a shorthand for referring to complex causal relations, and only the latter do the real causal work.
To be clear, I don't endorse that view, at least not in general, as I think that pluralism about forms of explanation is the way to go.
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@UlrikeHahn @dsmith @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @awaisaftab @uh However, pluralism does not mean anything goes, and we need to try and figure out which explanations are appropriate for what and for what purposes.
DST explanations may be mere redescriptions in some cases, but may be good explanations in others. They need not exclude mechanistic explanations. On the contrary, they may complement each other, with the latter providing an explanation for why those dynamics arise, etc.
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@UlrikeHahn @dsmith @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @awaisaftab @uh on Ulrike's point about what counts as 'object' and what as 'constraint', I think this is a matter of explanatory needs, perspective, etc. But such a relativistic view seems at odds with Juarrero's project. As I understand it, she wants to claim that constraints are there in the 'fabric' of the universe. If so, then we get the issues you point out, especially given J.'s vagueness.
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@[email protected] @UlrikeHahn @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @awaisaftab @uh
For the record, I agree with Juerrero -- and like the way you've put it -- that constraints are there in the 'fabric' of the universe. I'd further offer that constraints coordinate to provide (all?) species-typical experience, but would also acknowledge that, like affordances, constraints for one species may not be constraints for a different species.
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@[email protected] @NicoleCRust @[email protected] @awaisaftab @uh thanks for the paper! I had a quick read through and it is helpful, but I wanted to draw attention to something that already struck me when I went back and read van Gelder, which is that dynamical systems and complex systems are not the same thing, though related, and some of the aspects of J’s book that I’m most interested in like the mereological (part/whole) issues aren’t really part of the discussion of DS (in cogsci)
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@dsmith @[email protected] @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @awaisaftab @uh Dylan, I personally don’t have a prior investment into the metaphysical status of constraints (in what way they are real or not) at all, and am totally happy to be convinced either way. My problem at the moment is that I feel like the examples aren’t (yet) clear enough to me one way or the other and the exposition in the book is still too fuzzy for me to really be able to work with….
1/2
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@UlrikeHahn @NicoleCRust @[email protected] @awaisaftab @uh that's true, I didn't mean to suggest that Juarrero is defending DST, mine was just an off-the-cuff parenthetical remark about potential analogies between Juarrero's notion of constraints and its problems, and some issues regarding DST and explanatory power.
Good though that it led to some interesting discussions!
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@[email protected] @NicoleCRust @[email protected] @awaisaftab @uh indeed! It’s just that, for me, the notion of constraint seems potentially really useful in a way that DS on its own is never going to be for me….see the exchange about rationality and psych a few weeks back - DS (certainly of the anti-representational bent) is just a step in the wrong direction for the things I’m interested in
so I wanted to highlight the bit that’s (?) different and new about J relative to those past debates…
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@UlrikeHahn @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @[email protected] @awaisaftab @uh
These are excellent questions. A pragmatist might say that investigators have a choice to parcel the system however they please into levels for study, and that context is all that which is internal/external and deemed to factor.
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@dsmith @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @[email protected] @awaisaftab @uh agreed, but I’m with Dmitri here (and also @jef ‘s early comments on observers): that’s not the story the book is trying to tell. The claims of the book are much stronger. That makes them really interesting, but it also means they really need to be supported
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@[email protected] @NicoleCRust @[email protected] @dsmith @uh so is nobody else going to make more of a case that the constraints in the examples are real and have some degree of ‘causality’ or causal-like power?
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@UlrikeHahn @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh not me! I don't think Juarrero made a good case for those examples, and I still don't quite understand what she means by constraint, let alone the many different kinds of constraint she identifies.