Entries tagged with whitehead

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(no subject)

А. Воробей недавно написал, что разрешает себе писать о политике только если, как минимум, час позанимался физикой или математикой. https://avva.dreamwidth.org/3576932.html

Это хорошее правило. Для меня этот час будет включать философию — начал читать книгу Isabelle Stengers "Thinking with Whitehead: free and wild creation of concepts."

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Misplaced concretenes

Most discussions about AI, especially AGI, suffer from what Whitehead would call the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness. That is, people assume that Intelligence is something concrete existing in Nature that can be easily pointed to and described. Instead, we have a broad range of definitions covering various bundles of human and/or computer capabilities.
By contrast, discussions about industrial robots, including drones and autonomous cars, are usually much more productive because their roles are well specified in terms of tasks and accomplishments.

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Philosophy can exclude nothing.

...before the work of systematization commences, there is a previous task—a very necessary task if we are to avoid the narrownesses inherent in all finite systems... [this] primary stage can be termed 'assemblage'.

...the philosophic process of assemblage should have received some attention from every educated mind, in its escape from its own specialism.

In Western Literature there are four great thinkers, whose services to civilized thought rest largely upon their achievements in philosophical assemblage; though each of them made important contributions to the structure of philosophic system. These men are Plato, Aristotle, Leibniz, and William James.
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William James, essentially a modern man. His mind was adequately based upon the learning of the past. But the essence of his greatness was his marvellous sensitivity to the ideas of the present. He knew the world in which he lived, by travel, by personal relations with its leading men, by the variety of his own studies. He systematized; but above all he assembled. His intellectual life was one protest against the dismissal of experience in the interest of system. He had discovered intuitively the great truth with which modern logic is now wrestling.
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One characteristic of the primary mode of conscious experience is its fusion of a large generality with an insistent particularity.
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In order to acquire learning, we must first shake ourselves free of it. We must grasp the topic in the rough, before we smooth it out and shape it. For example, the mentality of John Stuart Mill was limited by his peculiar education which gave him system before any enjoyment of the relevant experience. Thus his systems were closed. We must be systematic; but we should keep our systems open. In other words, we should be sensitive to their limitations. There is always a vague 'beyond', waiting for penetration in respect to its detail.

--- Whitehead.
https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Whitehead/Whitehead_1938/1938_01.html

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https://chasovschik.dreamwidth.org/2385759.html

Почитал обмен комментариями между Яковом и часовщиком, и подумал, почему MAGA совершенно спокойно или даже с одобрением относится к трамповскому вранью и бреду. Часовщик честно пытается это объяснить, но у него плохо получается, потому что он внутри того самого "понимания" трамповского вранья и бреда.

По-моему, дело в том, что MAGA считает, что принципиально Трамп движется в правильном направлении. Поэтому не так важно, где именно он находится в абсолютных значениях относительно реальности. Главное - направление, а не фактическое положение дел. Все и так ужасно плохо!!!111111

Вот, например, в вопросе смены пола один из трампистов узнает, что Трамп забежал гораздо дальше, чем этот трампист предполагал. https://chasovschik.dreamwidth.org/2385759.html?thread=24061023#cmt24061023
Тем не менее, он не видит в этом ни вранья, ни бреда, потому что с его точки зрения - это всего лишь гипербола, т.е. направление мысли правильное, но совершенно простительно(!), что трамп забегает несколько вперед.

В терминологии Whitehead, трамписты занимаются классификацией проблемы, но ее квантификация им не так важна. Вернее, их субъективная оценка масштаба проблемы уже и так зашкаливает. Поэтому для трамписта не так важно, едят гаитяне собак или нет. Ноль собак или тысяча = это мелкие детали. Важно, что они мешают жить белым людям, поэтому их всех нужно депортировать хоть в Венесуэлу, несмотря на то, что они являются легальными иммигрантами, и их депортация будет прямым нарушением закона, не говоря уже о тысячах разрушенных жизней.

Талант Трампа в умении продавать завышенные оценки ситуации, т.е. делать из мухи слона. Мы это хорошо видели в его книжках, работе на ТВ и в судебных материалах. Как политик он продает ресентимент, который его аудитория готова потреблять в любых количествах. Враньем и бредом чувство ресентимента не испортишь.

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Приходит трампист в Trump University на прием к онкологу, а тот ему и говорит: у вас четвертая стадия рака. Как же так? - спрашивает ошарашенный трампист, - только вчера была первая.
Вы вывеску TRUMP на здании видели?, спрашивает врач.
Трампист кивает.
У нас свобода слова, говорит врач. Имеем право на гиперболу.
Главное, вы движетесь в правильном направлении.
Пишите завещание.

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Catastrophising is endemic in the society right now (maybe because of social networking). It would be an interesting research topic to understand how this works in a post-pandemic, climate change, WWIII, AI-will-steal-your-job world.

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(no subject)

There is an insistent presupposition continually sterilizing philosophic thought. It is the belief, the very natural belief, that mankind has consciously entertained all the fundamental ideas which are applicable to its experience. Further it is held that human language, in single words or in phrases, explicitly expresses these ideas. I will term this presupposition, The Fallacy of the Perfect Dictionary.

--- Whitehead.
https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Whitehead/Whitehead_1938/1938_09.html

We might be committing this fallacy wrt ML.~~, although most people live with the fallacy b/c their world is quite stable.~~ The world is full of inexpressible moments.

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The only intelligible doctrine of causation is founded on the doctrine of immanence. Each occasion presupposes the antecedent world as active in its own nature. This is the reason why events have a determinate status relatively to each other. ( Read more... )

-- AF Whitehead, Modes of Thought, Lecture 8.
https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Whitehead/Whitehead_1938/1938_08.html

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The sharp-cut scientific classifications are essential for scientific method. But they are dangerous for philosophy. Such classification hides the truth that the different modes of natural existence shade off into each other.

There is the animal life with its central direction of a society of cells, there is the vegetable life with its organized republic of cells, there is the cell life with its organized republic of molecules, there is the large-scale inorganic society of molecules with its passive acceptance of necessities derived from spatial relations, there is the infra-molecular activity which has lost all trace of the passivity of inorganic nature on a larger scale.

Whitehead. Modes of Thought, Chapter 8, Nature Alive. 1938.
https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Whitehead/Whitehead_1938/1938_08.html

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the characteristics of life are absolute self-enjoyment, creative activity, aim. Here 'aim' evidently involves the entertainment of the purely ideal so as to be directive of the creative process. Also the enjoyment belongs to the process and is not a characteristic of any static result. The aim is at the enjoyment belonging to the process.

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It is nonsense to conceive of nature as a static fact, even for an instant devoid of duration. There is no nature apart from transition, and there is no transition apart from temporal duration. This is the reason why the notion of an instant of time, conceived as a primary simple fact, is nonsense.
( Read more... )

Whitehead. Nature Alive, 1938. Lecture 8.
https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Whitehead/Whitehead_1938/1938_08.html

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In all discussions of nature we must remember the differences of scale, and in particular the differences of time-span. We are apt to take modes of observable functioning of the human body as setting an absolute scale. It is extremely rash to extend conclusions derived from observation far beyond the scale of magnitude to which observation was confined. For example, to exhibit apparent absence of change within a second of time tells nothing as to the change within a thousand years. Also no apparent change within a thousand years tells anything as to a million years; and no apparent change within a million years tells anything about a million million years. We can extend this progression indefinitely. There is no absolute standard of magnitude. Any term in this progression is large compared to its predecessor and is small compared to its successor.
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The danger of all these fundamental notions is that we are apt to assume them unconsciously. When we ask ourselves any question we will usually find that we are assuming certain types of entities involved, that we are assuming certain modes of togetherness of these entities, and that we are even assuming certain widely spread generalities of pattern. Our attention is concerned with details of pattern, and measurement, and proportionate magnitude. Thus the laws of nature are merely all-pervading patterns of behaviour, of which the shift and discontinuance lie beyond our ken.
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Nature is full-blooded. Real facts are happening. Physical Nature, as studied in Science, is to be looked upon as a complex of the more stable interrelations between the real facts of the real universe.

-- Whitehead. https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Whitehead/Whitehead_1938/1938_07.html

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pattern, measurement, proportional magnitude.

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(no subject)

The word ‘_perceive_’ is, in our common usage, shot through and through
with the notion of cognitive apprehension. So is the word
‘_apprehension_’, even with the adjective _cognitive_ omitted. I will
use the word ‘_prehension_’ for _uncognitive apprehension_: by this I
mean _apprehension_ which may or or may not be cognitive.

Whitehead. Science..., 1925.

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If we modeled this prehension as a CT monad we could develop and algebra of prehension, with quantative thresholds that separate the uncognitive and cognitive.

https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/state+monad

X -> [W, WxY]

Here the operation [W, Wx(-)) is the monad on the type system which is induced by the above adjunction; and this latter function is naturally regarded as a morphism in the Kleisli category of this monad.

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...space-time cannot in reality be
considered as a self-subsistent entity. It is an abstraction, and its
explanation requires reference to that from which it has been extracted.
Space-time is the specification of certain general characters of events
and of their mutual ordering. This recurrence to concrete fact brings me
back to the eighteenth century, and indeed to Francis Bacon in the
seventeenth century.
...
in order to
understand the difficulties of modern scientific thought and also its
reactions on the modern world, we should have in our minds some
conception of a wider field of abstraction, a more concrete analysis,
which shall stand nearer to the complete concreteness of our intuitive
experience.

whitehead. Science..., 1925

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The great characteristic of the mathematical mind is its capacity for
dealing with abstractions; and for eliciting from them clear-cut
demonstrative trains of reasoning, entirely satisfactory so long as it
is those abstractions which you want to think about. The enormous
success of the scientific abstractions, yielding on the one hand
_matter_ with its _simple location_ in space and time, and on the other
hand _mind_, perceiving, suffering, reasoning, but not interfering, has
foisted onto philosophy the task of accepting them as the most concrete
rendering of fact.

Thereby, modern philosophy has been ruined.

-- Whitehead. Science ..., 1925

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Whitehead writes about "the scientific outburst of the seventeenth century."

By this rationalism [of the Middle Ages] I mean the belief that the avenue to truth was predominantly through a metaphysical analysis of the nature of things, which would thereby determine how things acted and functioned. The historical revolt was the definite abandonment of this method in favour of the study of the empirical facts of antecedents and consequences. In religion, it meant the appeal to the origins of Christianity; and in science it meant the appeal to experiment and the inductive method of reasoning.

Whitehead, Science ..., 1925

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Apart from recurrence, knowledge would be impossible; for nothing could
be referred to our past experience. Also, apart from some regularity of
recurrence, measurement would be impossible. In our experience, as we
gain the idea of exactness, recurrence is fundamental.

Whitehead. Science ..., 1925

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Classification is a halfway house between the immediate concreteness of
the individual thing and the complete abstraction of mathematical
notions. The species take account of the specific character, and the
genera of the generic character. But in the procedure of relating
mathematical notions to the facts of nature, by counting, by
measurement, and by geometrical relations, and by types of order, the
rational contemplation is lifted from the incomplete abstractions
involved in definite species and genera, to the complete, abstractions
of mathematics. Classification is necessary. But unless you can progress
from classification to mathematics, your reasoning will not take you
very far.

The practical counsel to be derived from Pythagoras, is to measure, and thus
to express quality in terms of numerically determined quantity. But the
biological sciences, then and till our own time, have been
overwhelmingly classificatory. Accordingly, Aristotle by his Logic
throws the emphasis on classification. The popularity of Aristotelian
Logic retarded the advance of physical science throughout the Middle
Ages.

Whitehead. Science ..., 1925

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It often happens, therefore, that in criticising a learned book of
applied mathematics, or a memoir, one’s whole trouble is with the first
chapter, or even with the first page. For it is there, at the very
outset, where the author will probably be found to slip in his
assumptions. Farther, the trouble is not with what the author does say,
but with what he does not say. Also it is not with what he knows he has
assumed, but with what he has unconsciously assumed. We do not doubt the
author’s honesty. It is his perspicacity which we are criticising. Each
generation criticises the unconscious assumptions made by its parents.
It may assent to them, but it brings them out in the open.

Whitehead. Science in the modern world, 1925.

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...thought can penetrate into every occasion of fact, so that by comprehending its key conditions, the whole complex of its pattern of conditions lies open before it.
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Pythagoras was the first man who had any grasp of the full sweep of this general principle.
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He asked, ‘What is the status of mathematical entities, such as numbers for example, in the realm of things?’ The number ‘two,’ for example, is in some sense exempt from the flux of time and the necessity of position in space. Yet it is involved in the real world. The same considerations apply to geometrical notions—to circular shape, for example.
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unless you can progress from classification to mathematics, your reasoning will not take you very far.

Whitehead. Science in the modern world. 1925. Chapter II.

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/68611/pg68611.txt

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Accordingly the full universe, disclosed for every variety of experience, is a universe in which every detail enters into its proper relationship with the immediate occasion. The generality of mathematics is the most complete generality consistent with the community of occasions which constitutes our metaphysical situation.

Whitehead. Science in the modern world, 1925.
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/68611/pg68611.txt

This is a really deep point. Of all the sciences, math is the most internally consistent world: all the way from the most abstract generalizations down to humdrum elementary school arithmetics.

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(ix) That how an actual entity becomes constitutes what that actual entity is;+ so that the two descriptions of an actual entity are not inde- pendent. Its 'being' is [35] constituted by its 'becoming.' This is the 'prin- ciple of process.'

--- Whitehead, Process and Reality. (Categories of Explanation).

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1. [perception] Data (causal efficacy).
2. Possibilities.
3. Decision