deperplex explanation, understanding, emergence, cognition, 'theory' theory

  Originally published on Language and Philosophy, July 12, 2022 “Truth is always strange — stranger than fiction” – Byron It’s widely assumed that the arts are imaginative while the sciences are too constrained by reality, by formalisms, by math and by logic for flights of imagination. What if we’ve all got this backwards? One look at the history of the arts tells us that the arts are more imitative than innovative, otherwise it would be impossible to identify historical periods in the arts, and styles in the arts might be their most obvious trait, so much so that it can sometimes be difficult for an observer to tell one artist from another. This should not surprise anyone. It has a structural reason that is all too often ignored. Art is usually made for an audience. It is a game theoretic activity in which the artist must entertain the audience, which entails that the art work not lose the audience’ attention but continually communicate and engage. If the art is too innovative fo...

  Originally published on Language and Philosophy, July 12, 2022 An addendum on Hanson’s grabby aliens: If we were to assume that all of human futures are determined by those elements of human nature that have persisted through history, we might conclude that we will continue to expand our influence on nature, organize it, harness it etc. This seems to be the assumption Hanson makes in predicting that aliens with advanced technology will be grabby — they will succeed by Darwinian selection over their environment, dominating it, organizing it, harnessing it just as we have in our Darwinian selection here. Darwinian libertarianism is Hanson’s idee fixe which he applies to everything. But as David Deutsch likes to say, not without some (though not entire) justification, we can’t predict the technology of the future. More important, technological advances have been the great game changers in human history. They are changes in our relationship with our environment, and in our selection....

  Originally published on Language and Philosophy, July 12, 2022 If you’ve been to the movies you know how it goes. You buy your ticket, you enter the theater — giant, spacious room with lots of chairs. You walk up the aisle to the very back of the room where you find a narrow door. You open the door. Walking through, you find a steep staircase, almost a ladder. When you get to the top, not far, maybe ten feet, you’re in the projection room. You bring up a chair, sit down and watch the film — that narrow band of plastic on a big spool — feed through a light and lens. After watching the spool spin around for 90 minutes or so, if you’re lucky not longer, til the entire film has passed through the projector and the projector stops and goes dark. You get up and if you’re with a friend you complain that all the movies made today are all alike. That’s what you do at the movies, no? No? But you came to see the film. The film is in the projector. No?? A common answer to the question “where...

  Originally published on Language and Philosophy, July 12, 2022 If Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations is the core text that defines libertarianism, then today’s libertarian isn’t libertarian. The argument against government intervention today is as much a defense of possession — property and the unlimited acquisition of property — as it is an argument that markets are more efficient than legislation. And the fiercest argument over legislative meddling is about wealth distribution — appropriating property. Possession again. Opposing taxation has become the central principle of the new libertarian, whether because it is an easy electoral issue, or because Americans have lost trust in their government or become remote from it, or simply fail to understand their government, what it does and gives them or fails to give them and for what reasons, yet they understand the tax bill well enough. Taxation has become the issue to argue against, and freedom, easily embraced by American mythology s...

  Originally published on Language and Philosophy, May 15, 2012 On the religious side, there are those who manage to harmonize with the non believers, and those who respond aggressively. Naturally, I’m more sympathetic to the former. I often encounter believers whose religiosity is sustained by two guiding motifs: one is the mystery of internal experience and the external cosmos; the other is love. For them, their deepest sensibilities guide their understanding of their religion, and their scriptures are far less important than their personal faith. That’s consonant with my own sense of what it is to be here alive, in this place, in this time and together. The mystery motif impresses me with its poetry. I don’t dismiss it as mere poetry. There’s more to life than just truth — there’s also sensibility. How we approach inner and outer experience cannot be rationalized: those who are lucky enough to be able to suspend rationality or consistency far enough to be able to believe in a de...

  Originally published on Language and Philosophy, May 15, 2012 One of my proudest moments: A religious student in one of my linguistics classes challenged Darwinian evolution as “just a theory.” For a moment I thought I’d try to explain that the theory of evolution is scientific because it could be wrong, whereas Creationism is not scientific because it can never be wrong, but I realized that even if I spent the rest of the hour explaining that conundrum of falsificationism, they’d come away thinking that science is false and Creationism is necessarily true, so I’d not only be digressing from class topic, but it would be counterproductive. Instead I suggested that the difference between the millions of years of evolution that resulted in the complexity and usefulness of natural language, on the one hand, and on the other, the clumsy strictures of standard languages, are exactly like the difference between god-given perfection and the imperfect creations of the human hand: helicopt...

  Originally published on Language and Philosophy, October 29, 2011 To the extreme positivists who insist that science should stick with the surface data only, not speculative theories, and that science can only describe the world never explain it, here’s another homegrown example to add to your shortcomings. Standing in the communal shower at the public pool, my pool-friend the anti-Chomskean linguist, put forward his view of the unfortunate fact that the showers always seem to get too hot to bear. I explained that it is likely because the boiler overheats the reservoir of water. If you turn all the showers at once, to draw that hot water reservior out and bring cold water into the boiler reservoir, you’ll notice that the showers will get cooler. He scoffed. He, instead, goes from shower to shower, using the few seconds of colder water that has been sitting in the pipe, and cobble together a quick shower from among them. I pointed out to him, that my theory is falsifiable, and I’v...