(A collection of thoughts about this problem, not an argument.) 1) SYMBOLS ARE A

(A collection of thoughts about this problem, not an argument.)

1) SYMBOLS ARE ANALOGIES

It is possible to speak universal statements.

It is possible to record universal statements as symbols.

It is possible to manipulate relations between symbols while retaining ratios.

We can use numbers to represent quantities, but numbers are not limited in use to quantities, just as sets of objects are not limited to the property of their count alone.

We can use symbols to describe categories arbitrarily and at whim – they are categories: analogies.

We can describe possibilities in time and therefore constrain those analogies by temporal dimension.

We can count things that exist in reality and are constrained by measurement, and we can perform actions in reality constrained by practical effort. But actions exist, and symbols are just imprecise analogies to existence.

It is not possible to perform universal actions.

When we use the terms ‘universal’ and ‘infinite’ we refer to two possible meanings: a) the set of all X, the quantity of which we do not know, and b) an infinite quantity of X’s, the quantity of which we cannot know and cannot count.

‘Universal’ can refer to an unknown quantity. But it cannot refer to an infinite quantity. Because infinite quantities cannot exist in reality, only symbolically. We can error in our definition and create the error of infinite objects, but that is all.

“Infinite anything” is an error. It is the quantitative opposite of ‘division by zero’. We can write division by zero. We can write infinite quantities, but we cannot perform division by zero and infinite quantities cannot either exist or be made to exist in reality despite that we can express them symbolically. We can’t even ‘have’ zero anything except by analogy, because to ‘have’ something means having at least ‘one’.

We use infinite sets in mathematics as a shortcut for our ignorance – because they can exist symbolically even if they cannot exist quantitatively.

Making universal statements and using universal symbols is an acknowledgement of our performative ignorance.

It is a logical error to confuse performative ignorance with possibility. To confuse logical, symbolic allegorical possibility with quantitative or performative possibility.

Universal and infinite statements are analogies, not facts.

2) PERFORMATIVE TRUTH

If we agree on the definition of the room, people, and brown hair, it is possible to know both how many people ARE in the room, and how many people CAN be in the room. Any possibility of error is either an error in the definition of the room, or an error in the definition of ‘people’, or an error in our measurements. This is not a question of externalities for the purpose of action. And the problem with scientific theories is the problem of externalities (what we dont know), what we have selected, and omitted from selection, and our performative errors.

Information loss exists only because we articulate a theory. Not because the performative actions in the real world would lose such information. OUr actions in reality retain the relations to all other physical properties and entities in the universe. Our ‘rules’ or statements do not.

Ludic fallacies for example, argue that probabilities we can measure can produce risks measurements, but very few real world phenomenon are sufficiently closed domains.

3) RECIPES VS THEORIES

There is a very great difference between the errors that it is possible to create with symbols because they are ANALOGIES, and the performance of actions themselves. The question comes down to whether, when we say we have a theory, we are describing actions (a recipe) which produce specifically desired ends, or general statements (descriptive rules) that purport to describe as yet unknown circumstances.

Science progresses by producing recipes, and people improve those recipes. Theories are inductive tests that produce new recipes. But theories are just analogies, and recipes are prescriptions for performative action. I think it is a mistake to confuse the difference between symbols which are analogies, and actions which are recipes.

Rules are general and open to symbolic error. Recipes are functional and open to perforative error. But recipes make no broader claim than that they should produce desired ends if you make no performative error.

When we talk about the physical sciences we are discussing a vastly unknown territory where we do not understand the basic mechanics well enough to relate our different sets of symbolic tools and rules to each other. But at some point it is both possible and likely we will discover how to do this – because the universe does it so to speak. We simply lack the tools to observe it.

The failure to demarcate between actions, recipes, rules and symbols is just another kind of platonism in the benign sense, or mysticism in dangerous sense.

4) WORLDS AND THEORIES AS PLATONIC OR MAGIC

“We can never know. We can just keep trying.” We must keep pace with the Red Queen. But it turns out that trying produces recipes that work, and that we can indeed make general statements about recipes in order to help us understand how to make new and improved recipes.

The discussion of theories is a little too close to platonic or magian error, for adult conversation.

The practical difference is that if we must err on one side or the other: between closed mind and open mind, that the theoretical approach functions as a positive bias in favor of experimentation in the human mind, and the skeptical approach functions as a negative bias in favor of conservation.

And I am not sure that, like many things we create elaborate artifices to justify, much of symbolic reasoning is anything other than an attempt to alter our innate cognitive bias.

That’s a laudable objective, but not if we create a new form of mysticism while we’re at it. 🙂