Not in any important sense. Physical instantiations can be very varied..they don’t have to look like a typical chess set...and you can play chess in your head if you’re smart enough. Chess is a lot more like maths than it is like ichthyology.
Lots of physical things can have varied instantiations. EG “battery”. That in itself doesn’t seem like an important barrier.
>Even though I have complete control over whether to welcome you, the inference from “does not reflect reality” to “wrong” is still perfectly valid
In that one case.
OK, here’s a more general case: I’m looking at a map you’re holding, and making factual claims about where the lines of ink are on the paper, colors, etc.
This is very close to your money example, since I can’t just make up the numbers in my bank account.
Again, the inference from “does not reflect reality” to “wrong” is perfectly valid.
It’s true that I can change the numbers in my bank account by EG withdrawing/depositing money, but this is very similar to observing that I can change a rock by breaking it; it doesn’t turn the rock into a non-factual matter.
We already categorise sociology, etc, as soft sciences. Meaning that they are not completely unscientific...and also that they are not reflections of pre existing reality.
True, but it seems like “soft” is due to the fact that we can’t get very precise predictions, or even very calibrated probabilities (due to a lot of distributional shift, poor reference classes, etc). NOT due to the concept of prediction failing to be meaningful.
As a thought experiment, imagine an alien species observing earth without interfering with it in any way. Surely, for them, our “social constructs” could be a matter of science, which could be predicted accurately or inaccurately, etc?
Then imagine that the alien moves to the shoulder of a human. It could still play the role of an impartial observer. Surely it could still have scientific beliefs about things like how money works at that point.
Then imagine that the alien occasionally talks with the human whose shoulder it is on. It does not try to sway decisions in any way, but it does offer the human its predictions if the human asks. In cases where events are contingent on the prediction itself (ie the prediction alters what the human does, which changes the subject matter being predicted), the alien does its best to explain that relationship to the human, rather than offer a specific prediction.
I would argue that the alien can still have scientific beliefs about things like how money works at this point.
Now imagine that the “alien” is just a sub-process in the human brain. For example, there’s a hypothesis that the cortex serves a purely predictive role, while the rest of the brain implements an agent which uses those predictions.
Again, I would argue that it’s still possible for this sub-process to have factual/scientific/impartial predictions about EG how money works.
Assuming deteminism, statements about the future can be logically inferred from a pre existing state of the universe plus pre existing laws.
Right, agreed. So I’d ask what your notion of “pre-existing” is, such that you made your initial statement (emphasis mine):
In order for your map to be useful , it needs to reflect the statistical structure of things to the extent required by the value it is in service to.
That can be zero. There is a meta category of things that are created by humans without any footprint in pre existing reality.
I understand your thesis to be that if something is not pre-existing reality, a map does not need to “reflect the statistical structure”. I’m trying to understand what your thesis means. Based on what you said so far, I hypothesized that “pre-existing” might mean “not effected (causally) by humans”. But this doesn’t seem to be right, because as you said, the future can be predicted from the past using the (“pre-existing”) state and the (“pre-existing”) laws.
Lots of physical things can have varied instantiations. EG “battery”. That in itself doesn’t seem like an important barrier.
If the question “is thing X an instance if type T” is answered by human concerns, then passive reflection of pre existing reality isn’t the only game in town.
If type T is not a natural kind, then science is not the only game in town.
It’s true that I can change the numbers in my bank account by EG withdrawing/depositing money, but this is very similar to observing that I can change a rock by breaking it; it doesn’t turn the rock into a non-factual matter.
Rocks existed before the concept of rocks. Money did not exist before he concept of money.
As a thought experiment, imagine an alien species observing earth without interfering with it in any way. Surely, for them, our “social constructs” could be a matter of science, which could be predicted accurately or inaccurately, etc?
If the alien understands the whole picture, it will notice the causal arrow from human concerns to social constructs. For instance, if you want gay marriage to be a thing, you amend the marriage construct so that is.
If the alien understands the whole picture, it will notice the causal arrow from human concerns to social constructs. For instance, if you want gay marriage to be a thing, you amend the marriage construct so that is.
The point of the thought experiment is that, for the alien, all of that is totally mundane (ie scientific) knowledge. So why can’t that observation count as scientific for us?
IE, just because we have control over a thing doesn’t—in my ontology—indicate that the concept of map/territory correspondence no longer applies. It only implies that we need to have conditional expectations, so that we can think about what happens if we do one thing or another. (For example, I know that if I think about whether I’m thinking about peanut butter, I’m thinking about peanut butter. So my estimate “am I thinking about peanut butter?” will always be high, when I care to form such an estimate.)
Rocks existed before the concept of rocks. Money did not exist before he concept of money.
And how is the temporal point at which something comes into existence relevant to whether we need to track it accurately in our map, aside from the fact that things temporally distant from us are less relevant to our concerns?
Your reply was very terse, and does not articulate very much of the model you’re coming from, instead mostly reiterating the disagreement. It would be helpful to me if you tried to unpack more of your overall view, and the logic by which you reach your conclusions.
I know that you have a concept of “pre-existing reality” which includes rocks and not money, and I believe that you think things which aren’t in pre-existing reality don’t need to be tracked by maps (at least, something resembling this). What I don’t see is the finer details of this concept of pre-existing reality, and why you think we don’t need to track those things accurately in maps.
The point of my rock example is that the smashed rock did not exist before we smashed it. Or we could say “the rock dust” or such. In doing so, we satisfy your temporal requirement (the rock dust did not exist until we smashed it, much like money did not exist until we conceived of it). We also satisfy the requirement that we have complete control over it (we can make the rock dust, just like we can invent gay marriage).
I know you don’t think the rock example counts, but I’m trying to ask for a more detailed model of why it doesn’t. I gave the rock example because, presumably, you do agree that bits of smashed rock are the sort of thing we might want accurate maps of. Yet they seem to match your criteria.
Imagine for a moment that we had perfect control of how the rock crumbles. Even then, it would seem that we still might want a place in our map for the shape of the rock shards. Despite our perfect control, we might want to remember that we shaped the rock shards into a key and a matching lock, etc.
Remember that the original point of this argument was your assertion:
In order for your map to be useful , it needs to reflect the statistical structure of things to the extent required by the value it is in service to.
That can be zero. There is a meta category of things that are created by humans without any footprint in pre existing reality. These include money, marriages, and mortgages
So—to the extent that we are remaining relevant to the original point—the question is why, in your model, there is zero need to reflect the statistical structure of money, marriage, etc.
The point of the thought experiment is that, for the alien, all of that is totally mundane (ie scientific) knowledge. So why can’t that observation count as scientific for us?
The point is that the rule “if it is not in the territory it should not be in the map” does not apply in cases where we are constructing reality, not just reflecting it.
If you are drafting a law to introduce gay marriage, it isn’t objection to say that it doesn’t already exist.
IE, just because we have control over a thing doesn’t—in my ontology—indicate that the concept of map/territory correspondence no longer applies
I didn’t say it doesn’t apply at all. But theres a major difference between maps where the causal arrow goes t->m (science, reflection) and ones where it goes m->t (culture,construction)
Once you have constructed something according to a map (blueprint), you can study it scientifically, as anthropologists and scociologists do. But once something has been constructed, the norms of social scientists are that they just describe it. Social scientists don’t have a norm that social constructs have to be rejected because they don’t reflect pre existing reality.
Lots of physical things can have varied instantiations. EG “battery”. That in itself doesn’t seem like an important barrier.
OK, here’s a more general case: I’m looking at a map you’re holding, and making factual claims about where the lines of ink are on the paper, colors, etc.
This is very close to your money example, since I can’t just make up the numbers in my bank account.
Again, the inference from “does not reflect reality” to “wrong” is perfectly valid.
It’s true that I can change the numbers in my bank account by EG withdrawing/depositing money, but this is very similar to observing that I can change a rock by breaking it; it doesn’t turn the rock into a non-factual matter.
True, but it seems like “soft” is due to the fact that we can’t get very precise predictions, or even very calibrated probabilities (due to a lot of distributional shift, poor reference classes, etc). NOT due to the concept of prediction failing to be meaningful.
As a thought experiment, imagine an alien species observing earth without interfering with it in any way. Surely, for them, our “social constructs” could be a matter of science, which could be predicted accurately or inaccurately, etc?
Then imagine that the alien moves to the shoulder of a human. It could still play the role of an impartial observer. Surely it could still have scientific beliefs about things like how money works at that point.
Then imagine that the alien occasionally talks with the human whose shoulder it is on. It does not try to sway decisions in any way, but it does offer the human its predictions if the human asks. In cases where events are contingent on the prediction itself (ie the prediction alters what the human does, which changes the subject matter being predicted), the alien does its best to explain that relationship to the human, rather than offer a specific prediction.
I would argue that the alien can still have scientific beliefs about things like how money works at this point.
Now imagine that the “alien” is just a sub-process in the human brain. For example, there’s a hypothesis that the cortex serves a purely predictive role, while the rest of the brain implements an agent which uses those predictions.
Again, I would argue that it’s still possible for this sub-process to have factual/scientific/impartial predictions about EG how money works.
Right, agreed. So I’d ask what your notion of “pre-existing” is, such that you made your initial statement (emphasis mine):
I understand your thesis to be that if something is not pre-existing reality, a map does not need to “reflect the statistical structure”. I’m trying to understand what your thesis means. Based on what you said so far, I hypothesized that “pre-existing” might mean “not effected (causally) by humans”. But this doesn’t seem to be right, because as you said, the future can be predicted from the past using the (“pre-existing”) state and the (“pre-existing”) laws.
If the question “is thing X an instance if type T” is answered by human concerns, then passive reflection of pre existing reality isn’t the only game in town.
If type T is not a natural kind, then science is not the only game in town.
Rocks existed before the concept of rocks. Money did not exist before he concept of money.
If the alien understands the whole picture, it will notice the causal arrow from human concerns to social constructs. For instance, if you want gay marriage to be a thing, you amend the marriage construct so that is.
The point of the thought experiment is that, for the alien, all of that is totally mundane (ie scientific) knowledge. So why can’t that observation count as scientific for us?
IE, just because we have control over a thing doesn’t—in my ontology—indicate that the concept of map/territory correspondence no longer applies. It only implies that we need to have conditional expectations, so that we can think about what happens if we do one thing or another. (For example, I know that if I think about whether I’m thinking about peanut butter, I’m thinking about peanut butter. So my estimate “am I thinking about peanut butter?” will always be high, when I care to form such an estimate.)
And how is the temporal point at which something comes into existence relevant to whether we need to track it accurately in our map, aside from the fact that things temporally distant from us are less relevant to our concerns?
Your reply was very terse, and does not articulate very much of the model you’re coming from, instead mostly reiterating the disagreement. It would be helpful to me if you tried to unpack more of your overall view, and the logic by which you reach your conclusions.
I know that you have a concept of “pre-existing reality” which includes rocks and not money, and I believe that you think things which aren’t in pre-existing reality don’t need to be tracked by maps (at least, something resembling this). What I don’t see is the finer details of this concept of pre-existing reality, and why you think we don’t need to track those things accurately in maps.
The point of my rock example is that the smashed rock did not exist before we smashed it. Or we could say “the rock dust” or such. In doing so, we satisfy your temporal requirement (the rock dust did not exist until we smashed it, much like money did not exist until we conceived of it). We also satisfy the requirement that we have complete control over it (we can make the rock dust, just like we can invent gay marriage).
I know you don’t think the rock example counts, but I’m trying to ask for a more detailed model of why it doesn’t. I gave the rock example because, presumably, you do agree that bits of smashed rock are the sort of thing we might want accurate maps of. Yet they seem to match your criteria.
Imagine for a moment that we had perfect control of how the rock crumbles. Even then, it would seem that we still might want a place in our map for the shape of the rock shards. Despite our perfect control, we might want to remember that we shaped the rock shards into a key and a matching lock, etc.
Remember that the original point of this argument was your assertion:
So—to the extent that we are remaining relevant to the original point—the question is why, in your model, there is zero need to reflect the statistical structure of money, marriage, etc.
The point is that the rule “if it is not in the territory it should not be in the map” does not apply in cases where we are constructing reality, not just reflecting it.
If you are drafting a law to introduce gay marriage, it isn’t objection to say that it doesn’t already exist.
I didn’t say it doesn’t apply at all. But theres a major difference between maps where the causal arrow goes t->m (science, reflection) and ones where it goes m->t (culture,construction)
Once you have constructed something according to a map (blueprint), you can study it scientifically, as anthropologists and scociologists do. But once something has been constructed, the norms of social scientists are that they just describe it. Social scientists don’t have a norm that social constructs have to be rejected because they don’t reflect pre existing reality.