A new sandpit for long side discussions, conspiracy theories, idees fixes and so on.
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Smith9 & Svante re my comment “Hi grandkids – sorry…” i was being, in the spirit of diplomatic vs doomsday, a very doomsday-er heading I’ll admit…” (victim trolling?). Too many links, so replace spaces.
Let’s deal with McKinsey first.
Smith9 said “Not exactly “a future for the planet if emissions stay as they are”.
Svante “Nature bats last, sure, but how would you like your toast?”
Forbes! does it better ( see below).
McKinsey! Bedtime story for clients. “they assert [ read: Storylines ], used their global expertise [ read: harvesting money for others as we have clean hands not agw ] to compile a ‘Reference Case’ ” [ read: projections to calm bau clients ]. Their use of logic in this disgusts me. Oh McKinsey tell me how my finances will be in 80 yrs – they’d be rofl. Malfeasance and propaganda. Ipcc – “marker scenarios'”. McKinsey – a case for pollution and slowest possible actions imo.
Not even the ipcc will assert for a day.They use the correct words “Storylines and emissions.. and projections.
“The greenhouse gas forcing used by the AR4 models are derived from SRES emissions scenarios. The SRES report discusses emissions projections produced by a range of Integrated Assessment Models for a range of socio-economic storylines. Four ‘marker scenarios’ are recommended as the basis of climate model projections, together with two further ‘’:” http://www.ipcc-data.org/observ/ddc_co2.html
***
Search for visuals:
“Full Mauna Loa CO2 recordNATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION”
“670 ppm CO2 INDCs Strict’
***
As to 1,200ppm – yes extreme but a marker of effect via science. I like clouds.
“”Year 2100 Projections
ClimateInteractive org – Based on climate action pledges of UN member countries”
“Atmospheric
Concentrations (2100)
Annual CO2e
Emissions
(2100)
Confirmed Proposals
As of March 1, 2011
4.0°C – 800 ppm CO2
INDCs Strict
As of December 14, 2015
3.5°C – 670 ppm CO2 855 ppm CO2e
2°C Pathway
As of October 27, 2015
475 ppm CO2
485 ppm CO2e
6.01 Gt
1.8°C Pathway
As of December 14, 2015
1.8°C 450 ppm CO2 455 ppm CO2e
2.93 Gt
1.5°C Pathway
As of December 14, 2015
1.5°C – 425 ppm CO2 420 ppm CO2e
0.92 Gt””
www co2 earth/23-co2-future
***
Abc science show had Prof Tom Crowther on Saturday – 2nd March – saying;
“1.2 trillion trees needs to restock trees and soak co2.” Crowther noted he has never been attacked as badly by deniers. He also pointed out boosters. They didn’t complain or attack.
Search “Tom crowther climate science show abc australia” and see page full of deniers are linked more than science. They know how to tweak algorithms. Pity not the science algorithms.
“”COP21: ‘A trillion trees to the rescue’
“Tom Crowther garnered international interest in September when his group published an estimate for the number of trees on Planet Earth – 3,041,000,000,000. “”
bbc com/news/science-environment-35025276
***
Ipcc a nightmare to search. Nor do they do tipping points. Dead links everywhere. But this was of interest althought dated it has all the tipping points and potential runaway feedbacks:
“IPCC Predictions: Then Versus NowDecember 11th, 2012″”Reality: We are currently on track for a rise of between 6.3° and 13.3°F, with a high probability of an increase of 9.4°F by 2100, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” https://www.climatecentral.org/news/ipcc-predictions-then-versus-now-15340
****
“”Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions Set New Record
“Even those who don’t accept the science behind climate change should be concerned about this rise, because it continues unabated. At what point might it become a concern? 500 ppm? 1,000? If you look at the rate of steady increases, this curve should concern everyone on the planet because the increase is slowly accelerating over time:” … “Part of what is unknown about the effect of greenhouse gases on climate is the impact of feedback loops. These can be both positive and negative.” … “There are also moderating influences like the oceans, which can absorb a certain amount of carbon dioxide. This means that the temperature increase could be less than what might be expected based simply on the amount of carbon dioxide that was released.”
forbes com /sites/rrapier/2018/06/29/global-carbon-dioxide-emissions-set-new-record/amp/
KT2
your post is hard to follow, but let’s put it this way. There’s no point worrying about 1200 ppm, because the world will be cooked well before then, let’s say at 800 ppm. It’s like worrying about WW4, when WW3 is fought with nuclear weapons.
Svante. Yes I agree my post is hard to follow. The topic -AGW – and the knowledge that at 1,200ppm co2 will deplete our cloud cover was hard to find anything to directly link to see if that was a possibility.
Apologies for dumping a gish gallop. Yet it was a revelation to see how tricky for any say politicians to deal with agw.
You said ” It’s like worrying about WW4, when WW3 is fought with nuclear weapons.”. It wasn’t like that for me at all. It was like:
cosmic microwave background or
Poincaré- conjecture. A piece of detailed knowledge to learn from.
JQ, Svante, Smith9, all, I feel disrespectful of this blog and disgusted I posted above comment which was a scratch pad of bits and pieces with unfiltered emo mckinsey re annactual comment. I admit it. Mea culpa. I didn’t check what I posted. 3am this morning my subconscious caught up. Minor family mishap took my attention but in no excuses not even bothering to check. Yellow card. Benched myself.
join the club.
i do it all the time— a 3am “oh no” moment is not mine though.
mine come generally just after i’ve clicked “post comment”
Immortality can be a bitch.
It is the sandpit, guys. Post what you want (within the limits of defamation and decency)
Since JQ has said “Post what you want (within the limits of defamation and decency)”, I will post a short excerpt from my unpublished philosophical work in progress. It will never be published of course except in this vanity-publishing manner facilitated by JQ’s hosting generosity. This excerpt of two short sections, in a sense, stands on its own. I hope some may find it of interest. Comments welcome if anyone manages to read it.
3.3 – Further Notes on Method with reference to Boundaries.
Given its general aim, this paper must investigate the boundary between philosophy and science. The specific focus will be the boundary between metaphysics and complex systems science. The focus on boundaries is methodologically consistent. In physics, chemistry and biology boundaries are generally definable and it is at boundaries that discrete systems interact. Admittedly, there is a “by definition” element to this statement. What occurs at boundaries and what crosses boundaries are phenomena both observable and diagnostic. Boundary phenomena give us information about the interacting systems. Indeed, it will be argued in this paper that system boundary phenomena are the only phenomena empirically available to humans from their senses and instruments. Information or sense data (termed “impressions” in older philosophical terminology) cross our bodily boundaries – in various manners according to the modes of operation of the different senses – and are thence transmitted to the brain where the information undergoes further operations and transformations. A good understanding of boundary interactions facilitates the process of making inferences about the system-internal structures and processes for each interacting system under investigation. A metaphysics of the boundary as empirical interface and of all-existence (the cosmos) as being able to be most effectively modeled by humans from the stance of complex system priority monism should facilitate a resolution of metaphysics in Empirical Philosophy.
Philosophical method of course proceeds from a priori justification and it is worth reviewing and clarifying the concept. “A priori justification is a type of epistemic justification that is, in some sense, independent of experience.” – Kant. That is to say, an a priori justification will either not have any apparent empirical justification (though it may have a dogmatic one) or it will have an imperfect or incomplete empirical justification. An a priori justification will be stated either as an absolute knowledge claim, or as a provisional knowledge claim, and thence be used as a starting point for philosophical investigation. Absolute knowledge claims are characteristic of dogmas; religious or ideological dogmas. Provisional knowledge claims recognise their own provisional nature and such claims are often made as relatively modest and pragmatic starting points for investigation; for inductions and deductions. Provisional knowledge claims will tend to have some incomplete empirical justification and some basic plausibility, perhaps as an Occam’s razor (simplest possible) explanation. Philosophical argument should then proceed by rational induction and deduction; it will follow the methods of pure reason, to some extent, as “the cognitions after which reason might strive independently of all experience,” – Kant. There is an apparent claim in such method that reason alone can deduce at least some truths independent of experience.
3.3.1 – Evolutionary Justification for Asserting the Sometime Efficacy of Pure Reason
This treatise, as it progresses, will adopt the general position, and provide demonstrating examples, that pure logic and pure reason can sometimes function effectively to deduce truths, as correspondences or congruences, to be later possibly confirmed, or refuted, by empirical observation and testing. If this were not so, logic and mathematics as disciplines would be useless to non-existent. Applied mathematics would fare no better in assisting both engineering design and scientific prediction than the reading of entrails. The sometime efficacy of pure reason, pure logic and pure mathematics can be found to have an evolutionary explanation. Certain valid logical operations have an explanation for their cultural transmission and persistence by virtue of the conferral of better survival and reproduction chances upon the individuals and cultures whose minds employ such forms of “reality-congruent” logic. Long term survival advantage and short term pragmatic advantage are the general proofs of such congruence. There will be a necessity, in the course of this treatise, to separate out issues of language-logic evolution and transmission from issues of somatic evolution and heredity; essentially as a memomics versus genomics discussion in the broad co-evolution sense.
The assumption that some valid deductions are “pure reason” and “independent of all experience” will be found to be an incomplete description. These deductions only appear to be independent of “all experience”. Sometimes, they will be found to be dependent on as yet explicitly un-noted or unexamined aspects of personal experience. Where they are genuinely independent of all proximal and personal experience, they will be found to be dependent on distal species experience, as ancestor experiences culturally transmitted as surviving memes of operational logic contained in language. There must exist, at the least, a rudimentary universal logic, by which the human brain and mind interpret or rather model the world to make some communicable sense of external reality (for humans as a social species) and to pragmatically interact (in mutual cooperation) with external reality; the latter being defined as systems external to brain and mind systems.
The broad idea of brain and/or mind evolving in response to, and to successfully respond to, the environment was elucidated at least as early as Hume and his was the very philosophical induction which suggested the essence of evolution to Darwin. Darwin himself acknowledged this. It is wonderful demonstration, if one is needed, of the real use of good empirical philosophy in the development of science. (Note: still searching for the references to support this statement but IIRC they certainly do exist.)
3.3.2 – Boundaries – Seen Surfaces, Hidden Interiors.
Classical systematic philosophy, as pre-scientific philosophy, found its raison d’être in wonder and its method in systematic doubt. The combination of the two leads to the apprehension that thorough-going truth and knowledge are seldom immediately obvious and are thus matters worthy of extensive investigation and profound thought. Scepticism, of received or dogmatic authority, but also of data from the fallible senses and the deceptive appearances of the world, must be systematically applied, as methodical doubt, to beliefs and to purported knowledge. Methodical doubt mandates and facilitates methodical investigation. In this context, two domains present themselves for investigation, the world and what humans say about it. Further, there is a sensed split between the appearance of the world and the deeper reality of the world and indeed this split appears in many human discourses about the world. Appearance is of the surface; superficial, incomplete and often misleading. The full reality is that which is hidden beneath; deep, complex and often unknown.
The difference between a surface and the reality beneath, turns out to be precisely of the nature of a difference between a system’s boundary and the internals of the system. Examples of such boundaries are available to ordinary perception everywhere in the natural world. One can note the surface of a lake or the skin of an apple as examples of surfaces and thus of system boundaries. Boundaries immediately present interesting and sometimes contrasting characteristics. A boundary may be permeable, semi-permeable or impermeable. We might also use the broader terminology of penetrable, semi-penetrable or impenetrable. The act of penetrating a boundary leads to a discovery of some things beneath or beyond the boundary, which otherwise could not be known. Diving through the surface of a lake may reveal fish or no fish in the middle depths and a lake bottom of sand, mud or weed. Biting through the skin of an apple will reveal edible pulp in the case of a good apple or inedible pulp in the case of a bad or unripe apple. Details of the skin (colours, wrinkles, depressions) may or may not have already revealed some information about the nature of the pulp in the apple. A surface or boundary may convey almost no information, some information or considerable information about the system’s “depths”, depending on the boundary’s nature and its relation to that which lies below or beyond it. Sooner or later we reach boundaries where we cannot penetrate further into the nature of things.
This common and repeated human experience, that boundaries are both revealing and concealing, can (along with “over-philosophising”) lead to a “second order reification” of something which is posited to be beyond all boundaries. To reiterate, reification (also known as the fallacy of misplaced concreteness or hypostatization) is a fallacy whereby an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a physically real process or entity. A second order (and inverted) reification, in my definition, is the fallacy whereby the mind’s models of concrete real objects, real processes or real systems, especially the mind’s most abstract philosophical, mathematical or mathematico-deductivist models, are intellectually fetishized and then considered and treated, not as concretely real like an ordinary reification, but as ideally real (existing in an ideal realm external to the mind and beyond all boundaries) and somehow “more real than the real” in some pure or idealist sense. A prime candidate for a general instance of second order (inverted) reification is Plato’s Theory of Forms. It is assumed that, beyond the presumed final boundary, which we cannot penetrate, there must be a fundamental difference from ordinary nature; a fundamentally different realm where there exist only ideal forms without substance, like the perfect sphere for example, which somehow inform or determine all of detectable nature and somehow participate in creating real forms which are imperfect reproductions of perfect or ideal forms.
The state or nature of reality beyond that final boundary is assumed to be qualitatively and profoundly, that is to say absolutely, different and in all ways ideal. Yet these pure, ideal forms posited to exist outside all reachable or detectable reality look suspiciously alike, indeed identical, to the most abstract models in the human mind. The Occam’s razor alternative is to assume that right across the system of existence a condition of complex system monism pertains; a single system of systems without any assumption of substance difference or connection difference even at unseen levels or at space-time distances beyond the bounds of experience.
Second order, inverted reification, growing out of the ambiguity which the experience of knowable surfaces and unknowable depths presents to the enquiring mind, is very possibly the psychological, and perhaps even the evolutionary-psychological (evo-psych), precursor of religious and mystical feelings as qualia and of dualism as a philosophical response. The brain, or rather mind-processes in the brain, seek correlative certainties for pragmatic survival reasons. The mind further seeks, it can be argued, for a meta-certainty; that is a certainty that its set of certainty and reliability models for interacting with the world possess cross-consistency. Unresolvable ambiguity in this arena potentially involves the mind, which is seeking for certainty and equilibrium, in endless loops or recursion difficulties, manifested as paralysing indecision, inaction or crises of confidence or faith (faith being no more than belief in dogma without any evidence other than the authority claims of the dogma itself).
Endless loops require error handling. Error handling in turn can be and is implemented in an essentially arbitrary but pragmatic (or evolved) manner, such that when a certain value or quantity is reached, the looping or recursion is terminated. After a given number of loops, or a given amount of recursion generating a rising discomfit potential, reaches some sort of pre-set biological limit, a new potential must flood the nervous system and terminate the recursion. To put it neurologically, newly released neurochemicals can swamp thought processing which is caught in an endless loop and thus terminate the processing. This loop termination could easily be an anger outburst, a depression episode or some displacement activity involving strong and usually physical sensations, meaning pleasures for the sybarite and pains for the masochist.
Smith9 & Svante re my comment “Hi grandkids – sorry…” i was being, in the spirit of diplomatic vs doomsday, a very doomsday-er heading I’ll admit…” (victim trolling?). Too many links, so replace spaces.
Let’s deal with McKinsey first.
Smith9 said “Not exactly “a future for the planet if emissions stay as they are”.
Svante “Nature bats last, sure, but how would you like your toast?”
Forbes! does it better ( see below).
McKinsey! Bedtime story for clients. “they assert [ read: Storylines ], used their global expertise [ read: harvesting money for others as we have clean hands not agw ] to compile a ‘Reference Case’ ” [ read: projections to calm bau clients ]. Their use of logic in this disgusts me. Oh McKinsey tell me how my finances will be in 80 yrs – they’d be rofl. Malfeasance and propaganda. Ipcc – “marker scenarios'”. McKinsey – a case for pollution and slowest possible actions imo.
Not even the ipcc will assert for a day.They use the correct words “Storylines and emissions.. and projections.
“The greenhouse gas forcing used by the AR4 models are derived from SRES emissions scenarios. The SRES report discusses emissions projections produced by a range of Integrated Assessment Models for a range of socio-economic storylines. Four ‘marker scenarios’ are recommended as the basis of climate model projections, together with two further ‘’:” http://www.ipcc-data.org/observ/ddc_co2.html
***
Search for visuals:
“Full Mauna Loa CO2 recordNATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION”
“670 ppm CO2 INDCs Strict’
***
As to 1,200ppm – yes extreme but a marker of effect via science. I like clouds.
“”Year 2100 Projections
ClimateInteractive org – Based on climate action pledges of UN member countries”
“Atmospheric
Concentrations (2100)
Annual CO2e
Emissions
(2100)
Confirmed Proposals
As of March 1, 2011
4.0°C – 800 ppm CO2
INDCs Strict
As of December 14, 2015
3.5°C – 670 ppm CO2 855 ppm CO2e
2°C Pathway
As of October 27, 2015
475 ppm CO2
485 ppm CO2e
6.01 Gt
1.8°C Pathway
As of December 14, 2015
1.8°C 450 ppm CO2 455 ppm CO2e
2.93 Gt
1.5°C Pathway
As of December 14, 2015
1.5°C – 425 ppm CO2 420 ppm CO2e
0.92 Gt””
www co2 earth/23-co2-future
***
Abc science show had Prof Tom Crowther on Saturday – 2nd March – saying;
“1.2 trillion trees needs to restock trees and soak co2.” Crowther noted he has never been attacked as badly by deniers. He also pointed out boosters. They didn’t complain or attack.
Search “Tom crowther climate science show abc australia” and see page full of deniers are linked more than science. They know how to tweak algorithms. Pity not the science algorithms.
“”COP21: ‘A trillion trees to the rescue’
“Tom Crowther garnered international interest in September when his group published an estimate for the number of trees on Planet Earth – 3,041,000,000,000. “”
bbc com/news/science-environment-35025276
***
Ipcc a nightmare to search. Nor do they do tipping points. Dead links everywhere. But this was of interest althought dated it has all the tipping points and potential runaway feedbacks:
“IPCC Predictions: Then Versus NowDecember 11th, 2012″”Reality: We are currently on track for a rise of between 6.3° and 13.3°F, with a high probability of an increase of 9.4°F by 2100, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”
https://www.climatecentral.org/news/ipcc-predictions-then-versus-now-15340
****
“”Global Carbon Dioxide Emissions Set New Record
“Even those who don’t accept the science behind climate change should be concerned about this rise, because it continues unabated. At what point might it become a concern? 500 ppm? 1,000? If you look at the rate of steady increases, this curve should concern everyone on the planet because the increase is slowly accelerating over time:” … “Part of what is unknown about the effect of greenhouse gases on climate is the impact of feedback loops. These can be both positive and negative.” … “There are also moderating influences like the oceans, which can absorb a certain amount of carbon dioxide. This means that the temperature increase could be less than what might be expected based simply on the amount of carbon dioxide that was released.”
forbes com /sites/rrapier/2018/06/29/global-carbon-dioxide-emissions-set-new-record/amp/
KT2
your post is hard to follow, but let’s put it this way. There’s no point worrying about 1200 ppm, because the world will be cooked well before then, let’s say at 800 ppm. It’s like worrying about WW4, when WW3 is fought with nuclear weapons.
Svante. Yes I agree my post is hard to follow. The topic -AGW – and the knowledge that at 1,200ppm co2 will deplete our cloud cover was hard to find anything to directly link to see if that was a possibility.
Apologies for dumping a gish gallop. Yet it was a revelation to see how tricky for any say politicians to deal with agw.
You said ” It’s like worrying about WW4, when WW3 is fought with nuclear weapons.”. It wasn’t like that for me at all. It was like:
cosmic microwave background or
Poincaré- conjecture. A piece of detailed knowledge to learn from.
JQ, Svante, Smith9, all, I feel disrespectful of this blog and disgusted I posted above comment which was a scratch pad of bits and pieces with unfiltered emo mckinsey re annactual comment. I admit it. Mea culpa. I didn’t check what I posted. 3am this morning my subconscious caught up. Minor family mishap took my attention but in no excuses not even bothering to check. Yellow card. Benched myself.
join the club.
i do it all the time— a 3am “oh no” moment is not mine though.
mine come generally just after i’ve clicked “post comment”
Immortality can be a bitch.
It is the sandpit, guys. Post what you want (within the limits of defamation and decency)
Since JQ has said “Post what you want (within the limits of defamation and decency)”, I will post a short excerpt from my unpublished philosophical work in progress. It will never be published of course except in this vanity-publishing manner facilitated by JQ’s hosting generosity. This excerpt of two short sections, in a sense, stands on its own. I hope some may find it of interest. Comments welcome if anyone manages to read it.
3.3 – Further Notes on Method with reference to Boundaries.
Given its general aim, this paper must investigate the boundary between philosophy and science. The specific focus will be the boundary between metaphysics and complex systems science. The focus on boundaries is methodologically consistent. In physics, chemistry and biology boundaries are generally definable and it is at boundaries that discrete systems interact. Admittedly, there is a “by definition” element to this statement. What occurs at boundaries and what crosses boundaries are phenomena both observable and diagnostic. Boundary phenomena give us information about the interacting systems. Indeed, it will be argued in this paper that system boundary phenomena are the only phenomena empirically available to humans from their senses and instruments. Information or sense data (termed “impressions” in older philosophical terminology) cross our bodily boundaries – in various manners according to the modes of operation of the different senses – and are thence transmitted to the brain where the information undergoes further operations and transformations. A good understanding of boundary interactions facilitates the process of making inferences about the system-internal structures and processes for each interacting system under investigation. A metaphysics of the boundary as empirical interface and of all-existence (the cosmos) as being able to be most effectively modeled by humans from the stance of complex system priority monism should facilitate a resolution of metaphysics in Empirical Philosophy.
Philosophical method of course proceeds from a priori justification and it is worth reviewing and clarifying the concept. “A priori justification is a type of epistemic justification that is, in some sense, independent of experience.” – Kant. That is to say, an a priori justification will either not have any apparent empirical justification (though it may have a dogmatic one) or it will have an imperfect or incomplete empirical justification. An a priori justification will be stated either as an absolute knowledge claim, or as a provisional knowledge claim, and thence be used as a starting point for philosophical investigation. Absolute knowledge claims are characteristic of dogmas; religious or ideological dogmas. Provisional knowledge claims recognise their own provisional nature and such claims are often made as relatively modest and pragmatic starting points for investigation; for inductions and deductions. Provisional knowledge claims will tend to have some incomplete empirical justification and some basic plausibility, perhaps as an Occam’s razor (simplest possible) explanation. Philosophical argument should then proceed by rational induction and deduction; it will follow the methods of pure reason, to some extent, as “the cognitions after which reason might strive independently of all experience,” – Kant. There is an apparent claim in such method that reason alone can deduce at least some truths independent of experience.
3.3.1 – Evolutionary Justification for Asserting the Sometime Efficacy of Pure Reason
This treatise, as it progresses, will adopt the general position, and provide demonstrating examples, that pure logic and pure reason can sometimes function effectively to deduce truths, as correspondences or congruences, to be later possibly confirmed, or refuted, by empirical observation and testing. If this were not so, logic and mathematics as disciplines would be useless to non-existent. Applied mathematics would fare no better in assisting both engineering design and scientific prediction than the reading of entrails. The sometime efficacy of pure reason, pure logic and pure mathematics can be found to have an evolutionary explanation. Certain valid logical operations have an explanation for their cultural transmission and persistence by virtue of the conferral of better survival and reproduction chances upon the individuals and cultures whose minds employ such forms of “reality-congruent” logic. Long term survival advantage and short term pragmatic advantage are the general proofs of such congruence. There will be a necessity, in the course of this treatise, to separate out issues of language-logic evolution and transmission from issues of somatic evolution and heredity; essentially as a memomics versus genomics discussion in the broad co-evolution sense.
The assumption that some valid deductions are “pure reason” and “independent of all experience” will be found to be an incomplete description. These deductions only appear to be independent of “all experience”. Sometimes, they will be found to be dependent on as yet explicitly un-noted or unexamined aspects of personal experience. Where they are genuinely independent of all proximal and personal experience, they will be found to be dependent on distal species experience, as ancestor experiences culturally transmitted as surviving memes of operational logic contained in language. There must exist, at the least, a rudimentary universal logic, by which the human brain and mind interpret or rather model the world to make some communicable sense of external reality (for humans as a social species) and to pragmatically interact (in mutual cooperation) with external reality; the latter being defined as systems external to brain and mind systems.
The broad idea of brain and/or mind evolving in response to, and to successfully respond to, the environment was elucidated at least as early as Hume and his was the very philosophical induction which suggested the essence of evolution to Darwin. Darwin himself acknowledged this. It is wonderful demonstration, if one is needed, of the real use of good empirical philosophy in the development of science. (Note: still searching for the references to support this statement but IIRC they certainly do exist.)
3.3.2 – Boundaries – Seen Surfaces, Hidden Interiors.
Classical systematic philosophy, as pre-scientific philosophy, found its raison d’être in wonder and its method in systematic doubt. The combination of the two leads to the apprehension that thorough-going truth and knowledge are seldom immediately obvious and are thus matters worthy of extensive investigation and profound thought. Scepticism, of received or dogmatic authority, but also of data from the fallible senses and the deceptive appearances of the world, must be systematically applied, as methodical doubt, to beliefs and to purported knowledge. Methodical doubt mandates and facilitates methodical investigation. In this context, two domains present themselves for investigation, the world and what humans say about it. Further, there is a sensed split between the appearance of the world and the deeper reality of the world and indeed this split appears in many human discourses about the world. Appearance is of the surface; superficial, incomplete and often misleading. The full reality is that which is hidden beneath; deep, complex and often unknown.
The difference between a surface and the reality beneath, turns out to be precisely of the nature of a difference between a system’s boundary and the internals of the system. Examples of such boundaries are available to ordinary perception everywhere in the natural world. One can note the surface of a lake or the skin of an apple as examples of surfaces and thus of system boundaries. Boundaries immediately present interesting and sometimes contrasting characteristics. A boundary may be permeable, semi-permeable or impermeable. We might also use the broader terminology of penetrable, semi-penetrable or impenetrable. The act of penetrating a boundary leads to a discovery of some things beneath or beyond the boundary, which otherwise could not be known. Diving through the surface of a lake may reveal fish or no fish in the middle depths and a lake bottom of sand, mud or weed. Biting through the skin of an apple will reveal edible pulp in the case of a good apple or inedible pulp in the case of a bad or unripe apple. Details of the skin (colours, wrinkles, depressions) may or may not have already revealed some information about the nature of the pulp in the apple. A surface or boundary may convey almost no information, some information or considerable information about the system’s “depths”, depending on the boundary’s nature and its relation to that which lies below or beyond it. Sooner or later we reach boundaries where we cannot penetrate further into the nature of things.
This common and repeated human experience, that boundaries are both revealing and concealing, can (along with “over-philosophising”) lead to a “second order reification” of something which is posited to be beyond all boundaries. To reiterate, reification (also known as the fallacy of misplaced concreteness or hypostatization) is a fallacy whereby an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a physically real process or entity. A second order (and inverted) reification, in my definition, is the fallacy whereby the mind’s models of concrete real objects, real processes or real systems, especially the mind’s most abstract philosophical, mathematical or mathematico-deductivist models, are intellectually fetishized and then considered and treated, not as concretely real like an ordinary reification, but as ideally real (existing in an ideal realm external to the mind and beyond all boundaries) and somehow “more real than the real” in some pure or idealist sense. A prime candidate for a general instance of second order (inverted) reification is Plato’s Theory of Forms. It is assumed that, beyond the presumed final boundary, which we cannot penetrate, there must be a fundamental difference from ordinary nature; a fundamentally different realm where there exist only ideal forms without substance, like the perfect sphere for example, which somehow inform or determine all of detectable nature and somehow participate in creating real forms which are imperfect reproductions of perfect or ideal forms.
The state or nature of reality beyond that final boundary is assumed to be qualitatively and profoundly, that is to say absolutely, different and in all ways ideal. Yet these pure, ideal forms posited to exist outside all reachable or detectable reality look suspiciously alike, indeed identical, to the most abstract models in the human mind. The Occam’s razor alternative is to assume that right across the system of existence a condition of complex system monism pertains; a single system of systems without any assumption of substance difference or connection difference even at unseen levels or at space-time distances beyond the bounds of experience.
Second order, inverted reification, growing out of the ambiguity which the experience of knowable surfaces and unknowable depths presents to the enquiring mind, is very possibly the psychological, and perhaps even the evolutionary-psychological (evo-psych), precursor of religious and mystical feelings as qualia and of dualism as a philosophical response. The brain, or rather mind-processes in the brain, seek correlative certainties for pragmatic survival reasons. The mind further seeks, it can be argued, for a meta-certainty; that is a certainty that its set of certainty and reliability models for interacting with the world possess cross-consistency. Unresolvable ambiguity in this arena potentially involves the mind, which is seeking for certainty and equilibrium, in endless loops or recursion difficulties, manifested as paralysing indecision, inaction or crises of confidence or faith (faith being no more than belief in dogma without any evidence other than the authority claims of the dogma itself).
Endless loops require error handling. Error handling in turn can be and is implemented in an essentially arbitrary but pragmatic (or evolved) manner, such that when a certain value or quantity is reached, the looping or recursion is terminated. After a given number of loops, or a given amount of recursion generating a rising discomfit potential, reaches some sort of pre-set biological limit, a new potential must flood the nervous system and terminate the recursion. To put it neurologically, newly released neurochemicals can swamp thought processing which is caught in an endless loop and thus terminate the processing. This loop termination could easily be an anger outburst, a depression episode or some displacement activity involving strong and usually physical sensations, meaning pleasures for the sybarite and pains for the masochist.