Selected (mainly critical) responses to my essays on Medium — and my replies to them. (4)
[Editorial square brackets have been added to make things clearer.]
A Story Written by AI?
Jim Clyde Monge wrote:
“The article you are about to read is written entirely by GPT-3, OpenAI’s powerful new language generator.”
My reply:
“Yes — it may have been ‘written by AI’ (or by a programme) — yet that may not amount to much. Perhaps all the words in this programme came from human (i.e., non-AI) sources. The AI programme might have simply played about with the words a little. I don’t know. This is equivalent of a AI ‘composer programme’ which often has phrases or tunes in its programme and then it simply juxtaposes that data according to strictly-programmed rules. (To put it very crudely.)
“In fact evidence will need to be provided that this AI programme didn’t simply (as it were) copy and paste someone else’s work (or somehow fuse the work of different writers). Then again, much of what’s just been said can also be said of human beings too!”
[This isn’t an argument against AI. It’s simply a sceptical take on this particular case.]
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Why Derrida?
Reverend Andy wrote:
“So, yea, in the end I don’t think Derrida matters. That’s all. I feel we are wasting our time right now.
“Why are you interested in all this? Did you already share?”
My reply:
“Don’t you mean that Derrida doesn’t matter to you? He clearly matters to a lot of people — at least within academia. [That is] his views have had a large impact on such things as American university departments [as well as] what’s taught in them, lawyers, etc. In addition, his views are ‘simplified’ (despite Professor Christina Howells not wanting them simplified by the wrong people) and have filtered down to activists ‘on the street’ (something you appear to deny). Now that’s despite what both of us have said about his obscure prose. And that’s a situation that needs explanation.
“Also, you yourself must be ‘interested in all this’ because you’ve replied twice and you read the original article. [So the words ‘Why are you interested in this?’ are rhetorical.]
“There are many reasons why I’m interested in this — some of which I’ve just given. It began, however, when I was force-fed Derrida’s and similar theorists’ views as a mature student at university. The situation was so bad that I ended up demanding that my degree be externally marked because of the clear bias and even antipathy of the professors toward me. (I was at an ‘arts college’ of a larger university — Leeds University. Thus the college sent my degree work to the main university — and those there, I presume, didn’t really know the professors who taught me.) It turned out well because I ended up getting a 1st Class Degree.”
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Reductionism!
MD Cobbald wrote:
“This was fun but a very left-brained argument.”
My reply:
“What, exactly, is a ‘left-brained argument’? You don’t mention a single argument, quote a single passage or even mention a single syllable of a 14-minute essay. It’s almost as if you simply read the title [i.e., ‘Murray Gell-Mann on Scientific Reductionism’] and wrote a vague and highly-generalised emotional response to it. Did the single word ‘reductionism’ [i.e., in the title] get you going?”
MD Cobbald wrote:
“The perpetual physical reductionism of of science is one thing, but what of the abhorrent metaphysical reductionism inherent in post Newtonian scientific philosophy?”
My reply:
“What of it? Is your rhetoric enough? Is supplying argumentation, data, evidence, reasoning, etc. also ‘reductionist’ and therefore ‘abhorrent’ too?”
MD Cobbald wrote:
“Phenomena are observed through the narrow perception of the human machine in an attempt to describe principals broader than the perception of the human machine.”
My reply:
“What does all that mean? Is it poetry? You yourself clearly seem to be attempting to observe things beyond the human machine that is yourself. Yet because your own rhetoric is anti-reductionist and embarrassingly vague, that must be okay to you.”
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Gödel, Truth and Proof
Christian Gawron wrote:
“What about ‘true’ statements which can’t be proven? If there is no prove for a true statement, it is not merely ‘correct’ in the sense of ‘mathematical grammar’. Nevertheless, Gödel has shown such unprovable true statements exist in mathematics.”
My reply:
“That wouldn’t in itself work against Wittgenstein’s position — at least as it’s presented in the essay above. In this essay, the debate about the relation between truth and proof isn’t brought up. That said, this truth-without-proof would still depend on systems, grammar and correctness. That is, it’s the grammar and correctness of the statements within a system which, according to Gödel, produce such truths which can’t be proven [i.e., within the system/s]. An unprovable truth would still be a product of grammar, correctness and a system. There could be no platonic mathematical truth which is free-standing.
“Now, as far as truth-without-proof is concerned: this has been much disputed too. (The main contention is to ask how mathematicians know that they’ve intuited the truth of a statement without any process of proof or demonstration.) But since it’s not the theme of the essay above, I won’t comment on it — save to say that here again it only applies to truths both within and produced by mathematical systems. It’s for this reason that this Gödelian result is hard to apply across the board — even though it often has been!”
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Particles are Abstractions?
Don Salmon wrote:
“Sigh. That’s ok. I’ll just say one thing — ‘fermions’ ‘bosons’ and the rest are abstractions created by physicists. They don’t directly provide evidence of anything real. But that’s philosophy, not science. I’ll leave it at that.”
My reply:
“Why are fermions and bosons ‘abstractions’? The mathematics used in the theories of physics may be abstract, but surely fermions and bosons aren’t themselves abstract. They are indirectly observed in experiments, manipulated, fired, produced, modeled, etc. You wouldn’t be writing these words if it weren’t for fermions and bosons — if not fermions, then for something physical.
“If physics doesn’t show ‘anything real’ — then what does? And what do you mean by the word ‘real’? You seem to implying that philosophy or… something else can show us what is real. Is that correct?
“You used the word ‘sigh’. Are you sighing at someone putting a different view to your own?”
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