#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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@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….
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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.
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@[email protected] @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh
I’m confused by the terminology too, but I’m thinking more and more that one’s opinion on both the notion and on the examples is going to be determined by how one thinks about possibilities or possibility spaces. If you start with those, then the notion of a constraint seems natural, and if you think of those possibilities in some sense as ‘real’, then constraints will be ‘real’ to that extent also.
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@UlrikeHahn @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh I agree, I just don't quite get why we should take that as competition to the familiar causal picture: constraints may capture patterns in nature, which are though underlain by familiar kinds of causal relations. So explanatorily useful in some cases, and capturing something real (as those patterns are real), but still no threat to the mainstream causal view, as J. seems to think.
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@[email protected] @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh
Maybe it would help to articulate ‘the mainstream picture’, causal or otherwise, on the buttons example as you see it? What is the story with respect to “a connected network emerged”, and it “emerged when there were x many links”?
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@UlrikeHahn @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh that sort of behaviour of the buttons depends on how they interact causally with each other, I would imagine, and this in some cases and under certain conditions generates a sort of network pattern, which just is the ensemble of those causal interactions. Something along these lines would be the typical causal picture?
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@[email protected] @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh in the example, they aren’t interacting at all. It’s just someone going around randomly tying bits of string between pairs of them.
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@UlrikeHahn @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh I see, then I don't think I understand the example: don't they interact through weight, friction, etc., once they are connected by the string?
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@[email protected] @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh they do, but the thing that’s at issue is why they are suddenly all connected. What ‘caused’ that?
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@UlrikeHahn @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh I looked for videos of this experiment to try and understand it better, but I don't seem to have found one.
I would think that the idea would be that what causes that is just the ensemble of causal relations between the buttons: weight, friction, etc with just the right values to make that happen. But my grasp of the case is not great, so I'm not sure. -
@[email protected] @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh it’s just a thought experiment, Dimitri. You could replace it with anything that can be described with a network: say a bunch of new people move into a neighbourhood, they bump into each other randomly, two at a time, and become acquainted. When they meet an acquaintance, they pass on new information about the neighbourhood. At some point, when enough of them have become acquainted (ie formed pairwise ties) info will spread to everyone
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@UlrikeHahn @[email protected] @NicoleCRust @dsmith @uh ah, the description on the book seemed to suggest it was an actual experiment/demonstration, since it talks about connecting physical elements to each other and then mentions, implying a partial contrast, results from a simulation of the scenario.
But in the neighbourhood case, what is the puzzle? Information spreads by people meeting each other, right?