Simulating the World & Remodeling Philosophy (Session 8)

Hello and welcome to the eighth session now of Simulating the World and Remodeling Philosophy. I'm going to pass the mic to Reza Nagarstani now. Thank you very much, Theo. Thank you everyone and I apologize sincerely for being late. Okay, so I remember that two great friends promised that they are going to do some stuff here. And I know someone is shaking his head. Let's hear them. And then I will start today's course on fictionalism, false models, and toy models. Yann, the mic is yours.

Awesome. Okay, so I think what I'm doing is representing the question I posed the other week regarding the circularity of models. And in this process, which hopefully doesn't go on too long, I'll sort of, I don't know, give some additional analysis. And maybe if we're interested, an example from my profession, which is really not legal, it's more sort of technical. Oh, so you are not a legal attorney. No, I'm just trying to mess with you. It's like in Breaking Bad when they say that. We need a criminal attorney. And he says criminal. No, we say criminal attorney.

No, I understand. It's just, you know, in the broadcast, the less said about that, the better. Okay, so here we go. You see a phenomenon and you wish to model it. What is the phenomenon? Limitation of the world. The phenomenon is a limitation of the world based on conditions, justice, just these attributes, just these mechanisms. The conditions of limitation in fact establish the phenomenon. In order for the model to model the phenomenon, it must recapitulate these conditions of limitation as otherwise and elsewhere to be a model of this phenomenon. In this sense, the conditions must be similar between model and the phenomenon. So that was the core of the discussion last week about similarities.

The difficulty becomes how to know the conditions of the model are the conditions of the phenomenon. How to know that the respective sets of conditions are sufficiently similar within their contexts, world versus model, to represent. My claim had been that the only method to validate the conditions, attributes, and mechanisms of the model as similar was to refer to the results of the model. This presents a circularity issue as the model is validated by the similarity of the conditions, which means that the validation of the model is validated by precisely that which is validated by the model. Circular. Okay, so, and here's my proposal to break this, kind of sort of break the similarity. If the model did not recapitulate

the conditions of the phenomenon, it would not represent the phenomenon, and it would not represent the conditions of the phenomenon. Rather, it would merely implement the conditions of the model. No circularity there. Removing the circularity in this way forefronts the condition of limitations, the conditions of limitations are not characteristics, not characteristics of the phenomenon, but primary conditions for the implementation of the phenomenon, kind of in a vaguely causative fashion. They are why the phenomenon is as in the world, so in the model. Okay, so two lessons to be drawn from this. If the model of the phenomenon does recapitulate

the conditions of the phenomenon. It would implement the conditions of the phenomenon. And this implementation of the conditions of the phenomenon represents the phenomenon as an implementation of the conditions of the model. Similarity of conditions does not validate the model's representation of the phenomenon. Rather, it is the implementation of the model which validates that the representations of the phenomenon as just those conditions of limitation of the phenomenon that are recapitulated as the conditions of the model. This is to say similarity of representation is unverifiable except as implementation. So the claim here is implementation is what matters. And I realize reading this, this is written not to be read.

It's a little convoluted. Sorry about that. Absolutely. Superb. Fantastic. Totally fantastic. Okay. I have, and then, so for the second lesson to be drawn from this, similarity of conditions does not validate the model's representation of the phenomenon, rather the implementation of the conditions validate the conditions as just those conditions that implement the phenomenon. The model affirms the conditions as the phenomenon and affirms the modeling of additional conditions in relation to the phenomenon for the purposes of prediction and disclosure. For example, it is only after the conditions of the model of the San Francisco Bay successfully represents the implementation of the conditions of the San Francisco Bay in fact,

thereby validating the model as an implemented empirical similarity, that the model is valid for the purposes of representing the Bay counterfactually as additionally limited. Implementation validates re-presentation in addition to representation. It is only once the conditions matter, the changing of the conditions can matter. So the model is saying, is in fact identifying the fundamental condition. That's why it's important. Right, super, excellent. And then I can give my little legal-ish theory. This is a little more sketch. This has already been a total attorney tier interrogation of a rational method.

I absolutely love it. Go on. Okay. Well, I should say initially this is like eight pages, but I just sort of cut it down to one. And it's... I want to see the eight pages. Oh, I'm sure you do. It's madness is what it is. Okay. So you have a legal theory, which is just an estimation of fact. You have a bunch of happenings, and you make a judgment about what the phenomena is, what happened here. So then you get into issues of proof. So you have tens of millions of emails. You have to use these tens of millions of emails to prove something or to disprove something. How do you find the relevant materials? Okay, you build a model using algorithms. How do you do that?

Okay. Essentially, you take a random sample of the materials, and this is sort of, you know, dirty fingernails sort of down and dirty, but you take a random sample of the materials and you identify theory compliant emails. This serves two purposes. First, you have established a responsiveness rate of the tens of millions of emails. And second, you have real world examples of your theory. Now, real world being as within this world of emails. So you feed your examples into the algorithm, and the algorithm analyzes theory compliance, the theory compliant emails for similarity. In essence, it builds a similarity table.

You know, this word relates to this word in the context of these other four words like that. The system applies the table to the millions of remaining emails and identifies emails similar to your initial seed set. You review these materials and you identify additional materials that are theory compliant. And you feed those back in and the system just, it keeps going in a circle, identifying and enhancing its similarity tables. Rinse and repeat until results diminish and the total reviewed matches the total implied by the response rate of your initial random sample. Then validate by sampling the unreviewed universe, and that's it.

You validated. What happened here? You have built a model of the theory by identifying groups of emails complying with the theory and building a similarity table based on those additional emails, those and additional emails. Importantly, similarity is black boxed by the algorithm. And validation is not premised on the similarity table, but it's premised on the exhaustion of theory-compliant phenomenon from the email world. Similarity is validated but undisclosed. Ian, may I ask you a question just for the clarity of my mind and perhaps other audience, without compromising you too much to reveal the secrets of your, basically, task?

What do you think, so what are the context of these emails? I mean, what would, what do you call these emails? Obviously these emails are from varieties of sources and different sources. Some of them are evidences, some of them are counter evidences, so on and so forth. What would you summarize the grand contextuality of these emails? from which you use a kind of an optimal, what you might call universal learning machine? Sure, sure. The context, it could be anything. In general, it's just

the section of your client's business that could possibly touch on the legal theory. Does that make sense? Yes, yes. I mean, it could very well just be their entire email server. I see. Super, fantastic, utterly excellent contribution, my friend. Okay. And that's all I had. Okay. Thank God. Who is going to respond to the end? I have some responses, but I want to hear from you first. I think I was supposed to be presenting on what we spoke about. Yes, you are going to represent. In the class, I have some general responses and some general questions.

And mind you, the unlegal questions coming from a musician who woke up from a sequence of three bizarre dreams. So one of the things that, well, speaking of just kind of going off of last session, you know, this idea that toy models are self-consciously not true. They do not work and that they prove as counterfactuals in a hierarchy to create new possibilities of judging our reality outside of itself. I was kind of thinking about in this again, this is like a meta theoretical question, but this is something that I had when I said I wanted to ask a question last time, but it didn't quite come to me is this idea of.

are counterfactuals a substitution for a metaphysical criteria? Like would a story or an allegory or something that contains an archetype basically be sort of like a metaphysical version of a sentence that can involve sort of like counterfactuals of reason and ration. Through historicity, you can see how sort of like mind and technoculture kind of like, they kind of co-evolve together. Part of what I'm wondering is, are we reducing the sort of like metaphysical propositions

and sort of conditions that most people in the world are still kind of, you know, They're subconsciously guided by this expansion of technology that kind of consumes them and creates certain – like this whole idea of false consciousness. I don't think – see, it's black and white. I see it as more of this gray scale where people have some sort of ability towards individuation, but there's also some standards and norms set forth by this kind of whatever we – how we define – reason how we are so what i'm wondering is are these are these counterfactuals or these toy models are they are they supposed barrett uh you're breaking up uh

would you be able to repeat your last sentence okay yeah yeah i got a i got the microphone got cut off but don't worry don't sorry I have gone through that kind of things like for 10 minutes talking to myself thinking that someone is listening to me don't worry about it yeah so so one thing I'm wondering is is are this are these sets of counterfactuals based on similar they merely when we're creating toy models and we're trying to find different universes outside of the context of our initial models by substituting different mechanisms say you use the analogy of the black and the white cow

and the brown cow and how we're fitting these pieces not based on just pieces and size but colors as well are we simply sort of just using these vintage parts are we kind of like looking at things from a place of constraining the metaphysical condition because people are talking about this like anthropocenic future right where we where we saw ourselves as this sort of pre-axiality we saw ourselves as this as this one kind of thing of a universe full of like gods and monsters and myths and you know one of the things i thought is interesting is you know At Pueblo Bonito, which are these labyrinths built in Mesoamerica, they built it underneath

this rock called Falling Rock because they knew that the lightning would strike it enough times to destroy their labyrinth and civilization before their own greed and nature could. actually built in this kind of strangely ingenious shelf life into their own civilization. That was a tangent. Then we go on to this place of where we're seeing ourselves as an individual in the world, and then we're seeing ourselves as a more insignificant individual. And are we finding ourselves towards a new form of panpsychism?

I have a lot of questions about the premise of how counterfactuals and models are attempting to replace a metaphysical theoretical condition. That's what I'm wondering. Superb, superb question. Excellent. uh well let's open this uh to collective questioning and interrogation the troublemakers raise your hand at this point i know who the troublemakers are do i need to come after you

I have a question for Ian, or just a clarificatory question. Can you expound on what you mean by implementation? Probably not well is the answer. Just in the sense that, you know, what the model is capturing is, I think, a happening. something is going on so laying out the conditions isn't enough the conditions have to actually enact something there has to be instantiation

effectuation yes that is what I meant questions if you don't ask questions I myself will interrogate you in the vein of the Grand Inquisitor at the dawn of witch hunting Who is going to talk at this point? Joven?

I know that Joven always has some ideas. Joven, are you asleep? I don't think I have anything to say. No, you have something. Come on. I mean, I have a question. My question, I don't know. I really like Dian's presentation, but I guess my question is about something you said a few sessions ago about law. I'm just interested in how, if you're not talking about a kind of Kantian a priori. Okay, so the question is about what is law in relation to models and counterfactuals, and if there is one. okay yes well the thing is that the canonical version would say that I mean

the idea of the so-called law that the law is not given to us you know for free To extract something remotely looking like a law is a task of investigating the world of modalities and counterfactuals. But I'm not going to delve deeper into this before I hear from other people what they think about these two presentations. excellent excellent stuff I think we are at this point getting a little bit more

polemical which I absolutely love it any philosophy that does not have polemics is not a philosophy it's just you know basically party conversation I'm not interested in party conversations I in fact don't have parties okay jump here well I'm working on something here can I have a little bit more time maybe no you don't have any more time I have given you many many more times well give Give it to me right now. Yeah, it's actually I was trying to rephrase or re-elaborate what was talking in the last

section with regards to Ian's presentation. I still think there is something to be gained from comparing what he's saying about models with the problem of counterfactuals as presented by Goodman and commented by Sellers. So I was just highlighting the... I have the text here in front of me, so I was highlighting the relevant... Well, this is your task now. In order to... Give a brief idea of what sellers mean by modalities or modal explanation, and what you can mean by counterfactual.

The problem is, okay, I could frame the question, I could frame the, what do you say, the final point of what I wanted to say by asking, is it really a virtuous circle? This is the question. So in order to clarify this, I think Sellers was trying to get from Goodman's treatment of counterfactual conditionals the idea of something like a virtual circle. Like by reapplying predicates, and each predicate contains like a set of descriptive elements,

by reapplying them and testing them again, you are gaining traction to the world, from language to the world. You are being able to describe something by reapplying predicates and re-elaborating them. But in order to do this, you have something that pertains to the infrastructure itself, like modality is related to the rules of using, the rules of use of the terms. and by re-elaborating the specific modality of specific terms,

you're actually changing their content, their semantics, actually. And by changing their semantics, you can gain more adequate descriptions, something like that. The problem with Goodman's treatment, I would advise maybe, it's not my place, but if you are interested, I got here the PDF. I can send the problem of counterfactual conditions, a very short text and very dense by Nelson Goodman. The problem with Goodman is that he starts from nothing. He starts from scratch. He starts from grade zero, something like that. He starts like, how can I formalize a contrafactual conditional and how by formalizing it I can understand its conditions of truth?

In a sense, a contrafactual is always false. This he says right from the start. So this is kind of related maybe to what will go on today in the class by means of fictionalism and this kind of idea. But nevertheless, even if it's literally a counterfactual, so hence not true, there are conditions of applicability. I don't know, something like that. So the problem is, his example is a famous example which is very mundane. Every match, if the match, what is the first version? Well, if I scratch the match, it would have been lit, something like that.

that. So the thing is, he formalizes it like this. There is a standing, a set of standing conditions, S, that will make the match to light if it's stricken. So the final conclusion he gets from this reasoning is we find ourselves i can quote him now this we find ourselves involved in an infinite regressus or a circle he's he's saying that the s has to be cuttenable with what he calls a the antecedent that is if the match had been stricken something like that so he says he

says we find ourselves involved in an infinite regressus or a circle for cotton ability is defined in terms of counterfactuals. Yet the meaning of counterfactuals is defined in terms of quotenability. In other words, to establish any counterfactual, it seems that we first have to determine the truth of another. If so, we can never explain a counterfactual except in terms of others, so that the problem of counterfactuals must remain unsolved. This is the conclusion of the first part of his... A kind of model incompleteness. Yes, yes, this is his conclusion. So Sellers starts from there, and I think he purports to solve this vicious circle by turning it into a virtuous circle somehow, by segregating

something like a descriptive function of language and what he calls a normative function, of course, normative function. So counterfactuals pertain to the norms of use of terms in sellers account. So in a sense he's trying to get, I think, somewhere that is analogous to what Ian was constructing, I think, like something that can be reapplied and refined by reapplication. So there is, I think, a category that is important there, that is time. So without time, we are locked in Goodman's enigma, I think.

What do you mean by time? The logical time of reapplying the predicates. because if you start from scratch every time, you still have to prove another counterfactual in order to have the truth conditions of the actual counterfactual. If you start always from scratch, always from zero. So this is maybe somewhat like a Hegelian dimension to sellers. That is the fact that we are always already in the game of providing these models of the world, so to speak, that by reapplying them and see what you get in return,

you are refining explanation, you are refining your picture of the world, or something like that. I think it's got someone, I was trying to clarify, for me, it's more for myself, I was I'm explaining it maybe to the benefits of some others I don't know in order to clarify what's what's the gambit of Ian's presentation and if if this at the end if it succeeds in providing like a virtual virtual circle account of modeling and or counterfactuals or something like that so So it's incomplete. This was my line of reasoning during the last section and what I'm trying

to work now by listening to you guys. So that was it. Thank you so much. So just a very, very quick kind of a rundown of if I understood correctly. Of course, Ian, If he thinks that I'm misrepresenting his view, Yan, please do correct me. So essentially we are in the realm of what Hume would have called Petito Principe. It begs the question. It begs the question. What does beg the question? Well, this idea of similarity, how the model is applied to the world according to a similarity criteria.

So, if I'm not mistaken, Ian put forward two kind of alternatives. One, with regard to the model itself, that the model will be just simply kind of giving us some features of the phenomenon. Now, how a model can give us some features of the phenomenon, of course, can be understood in terms of the application of the model to a physical phenomenon or in terms of a theoretical structure.

structure, the range of phenomenon within which the model, which is a subset of our theoretical structure, can cover. So that was one. And two was phenomenon itself, the physical phenomenon, the real phenomenon, puts certain kinds of constraints upon our adventures in modeling. The thing is that, however, this is a very, the second one, is a very dangerous path

from the moment of critical philosophy, transcendental term, onward. And in fact, also a very dangerous path in the science of modeling. You see, phenomenons don't give us anything. The pure real, so-called pure real, doesn't give us anything. world is not just there as some sort of telltale heart that can give us little bits and pieces of how it functions you see reality ultimately comes with

a struggle and this struggle is primarily scientific I'm sorry to say stuff that to so many of our friends might look scientific, but I really just don't think that the discourse about reality can actually say something more than what already science is. This to me is, to be honest with you, and again, please do object to me so we can have a conversation.

But to me, really, absolutely, any discourse about reality is ultimately going to be in one way or another following the scientific method. Either you take it seriously, you dismiss it, or you come up with a different alternative. Okay, so the second objection that Ian made, I don't think that the phenomenon itself can actually give us the constraints by themselves as a kind of like this real factor that somehow reveals to us how we should do these kinds of parameterization

variables and the structure of the model. No, everything that we can ever talk about reality is within the domain of theory. With the understanding that the model is within the system of theory I don't think that the second basically dilemma the second leg of it the idea that reality by itself gives us something the phenomenon gives us something that doesn't really hold a ground sure they give us a ground but within the realm of theory in the sense that for example with for example we use a non-euclidean

geometry okay since the time of one car and as ideal observers we arrive at new facts of experience with regard to the questions fundamental questions of a space and time and gravitation But this is not as if the phenomenon itself, the real world itself, has given us something to work, chew on, and basically regurgitate back to the universe. No. It's the only way that we can actually talk anything about the universe.

The real constraint of the world is within the ambit of theories. So I think that what I would say is that it's the first leg of Ian's question that should be taken very, very seriously. The idea that models structure the world. within the domain of a specific theory. And then this world, in one way or another, correspond or does not correspond to the world of the model.

But then we see here, actually as Ian said, a kind of vicious circle of analogy within the model, and the physical phenomena indexed by a theoretical structure. You see, it's not real as such. There is no such thing as real as such in the domain of science. So then, how can we graduate from this apparently vicious circle of models, ideas of similarity and correspondence or representation to a virtuous circle of analogy

where we can in fact refine our ideas of correspondence, similarity, and verification of a model against the real phenomena in the universe. That I think is absolutely an important question. Now, with regard to Barrett's presentation, what really took my attention was his last with regard to the idea that are counterfactuals

or all of them ultimately metaphysical questions? Well, this is really actually a very tourney question. You see, Barrett, the idea of counterfactuals initially were posed in order to sidestep the big metaphysical questions because counterfactual questions classically understood were modal and logical questions rather than metaphysical questions the moment that we take a counterfactual universe as a metaphysical question we are doomed but then

this does not actually mean that all counterfactual scenarios that are posed within the realm of science and philosophy are actually innocent logical epistemological and modal questions. In fact, there is a good amount of evidence by later philosophers to argue that in fact a lot of such modal and counterfactual scenarios are residues of metaphysical questions. Questions, answers, heckling.

someone put 300,000 words on the sidebar. Okay, while I'm reading this, someone come up with something. Lenka, do you have your microphone? Marie, oh Lenka, okay, super, fantastic. Well, I have microphone, but I don't have a question. That's the only thing I wanted to do, sorry. Any kind of comment that you can come up with, any kind of thoughts would be helpful at this

point. you see what we are basically we are in this kind of swamp that even a smallest perturbation might be a salvation if lenga doesn't have something to say i can um i can comment and answer questions any any person any person yes please Look what I have here, the thing you love, Lego. Coincidentally I use it for my drink. So when I watched again the video of the last session to understand Ian's question,

maybe this is irrelevant but I have it reminded me of Simmel's text on the philosophy of the landscape. Yes. You know, of course you know, but I don't know if the others have read it, but at the point he comments on Stimung about the way that we conceive landscape. He puts a really interesting example on the mechanism of love. He comments that the image that we have for a person is when we meet him let's say in the beginning is totally different from it's a little different to the image we have

after loving him and in a way this image changes in a way that the person that loves even doesn't understand how this change happened if this change was the reason that he or she loved him or or or her, or love was the reason of this image, of the change of this image. So what this has to do with models? It reminded me of the same, like how similarity works. maybe it is like what while constructing the model we we produces

it's like the example of the table the periodical table that it was he predicted something that it wasn't there before. It's like the image of the world is changing but we don't know if this similarity existed before and we didn't know it and by constructing the model we now have a new similarity, new rules that say a new image of the world. I don't know if this has something to do but that came up in my mind when I... Sure, my question would be that when you say love, I would say that this is more what you are,

Duluth would call it desire. But what desire would have anything to do with a modeling? Are you actually proposing that the way that... I mean, I'm not sure about this, and please do correct me. In the sense that, for example, when we do certain kinds of methods of heuristic approach with regard to the physical universe, we are simply using our entrenched desires. You know, kind of heuristic, evolutionary entrenched heuristic methods. And they are usually reliable. Precisely because they have come from the world. we are reflecting back to the world

now my if and please do correct me if I'm wrong if that is what you mean my question then would be how can we in fact apply any kind of evolutionary heuristic method in the name of desire in the name of want, need so on so forth back to the real as a kind of representational correspondence. With the idea that the real gave this to us. But isn't it exactly what Hume would have called

begging the question? Essentially, we are in the business of explaining what is in question by resorting, namely the explanandum, by resorting to the explanandum of the problem itself. Basically, premise loop. Beg the question, petite principi. obviously, sure, we have inherited so many of these such desiring machines and the Deleuzean sands or heuristic methods,

which evolved how we reason about the world. Well, we cannot just simply use them as that which explains precisely because these desiring machines, these heuristic methods, are themselves in need of explanation. And we cannot simply use these methods to explain themselves. We need to have something more. So my apologies, Artemis, if I diverge from your question. I just simply need a little bit more of elaboration on this point from you.

Yes, the thing was that it kind of creates a new similarity that we didn't have in mind. like new rules that we didn't have in mind. In the first place, we have the similarity that we can understand, then we construct the model, and then a new similarity is created. So I don't know how to explain it. Yes, but you see, a challenge for you at this point. So, sure, we have, you know, so basically, there is no such a thing as what we might call a kind of unified idea of mind.

Mind is not a thing. The first problem. Mind is not a thing. It's not a thing, actually. And it's not a unified thing at all. The idea of mindedness has different hierarchies. Each of them have different functions with regard to the other levels. But regardless, the whole point is that, so imagine that we are given by the world in evolutionary dynamics or whatever, some sorts of abilities that allow us to navigate this world. Right? You call them emotions, heuristics, pre-rational emotions.

uh tools so on so forth but then the whole point of modeling is epistemological justification of how is that our models do correspond to some physical aspect of the universe and not others Right? So surely we use such intuitive tools, heuristics, you know, emotional, so on and so forth. Just like, for example, early Poincarev would have said that, you know, so many of the stuff that we do in the science are actually discovered by,

you know, kind of constrained emotional devices that we have given by the mother nature. But then here a real critical question arises. If we are in the business of critical philosophy rather than just medieval hubris, that's okay, surely we can, for example, we say that we can discover such and such phenomenon using such and such intuitive methods. But ultimately, science is not simply about discovery. It is about epistemological justification

of what you have just discovered and the method by which you discovered the X. And hence, to that extent, we can say that how can we actually epistemologically justify such heuristic methods? Obviously, we cannot just say that, well, nature gave this to us. And precisely because nature is an all-knowing, is the ultimate physical dimension, everything that it does has some sort of semblance of reality. Well, that's just really medieval scholastics. We cannot do that at this point.

We need to say, why is that? The kind of evolutionary undergirded heuristics that we use in order to discover certain kinds of phenomena work and are rather optimal, not by recourse to the idea that, well, nature gave us, evolution gave us. These are, you know, these are intuitive, so on and so forth. No. To do so, we have to step into the realm of epistemological justification. And epistemological justification knows nothing of heuristics. That is the domain of reason as such.

Heckling. Can I say something? Absolutely. So I'm really intrigued by Ian's example of the law process. It was superb. It was superb. And it seems to me that's a good analog for what we're talking about with modeling, because The way he framed it, he said, well, something happened out there. We don't know what happened, actually. It's the job of the lawyer or the attorneys or in the process in order to discover what that, or not to discover it, but to reconstruct what happened.

So we have the body of evidence that gets collected. You could say that that is sort of a structure. This is actually, my apologies to interrupt you, this is really a fantastic idea that the majorities of so-called discoveries in science are reconstructions of evidence. That's right, yeah. And that's exactly what's happening here, is that we have a framework of evidence that you could say is like the model that gets constructed that is our analogy to, quote unquote, what happened. And then the theoretical framework would be the law, you know, the framework of a law in which this model, this evidentiary model sits in order to be evaluated. You know, and then it sort of, you know, through the process, it goes in front of the jury, which is another part of this that really interests me.

It's like sort of how the model within the, as it relates to the theoretical framework and sort of helps us to clarify and sharpen our understanding. It's pitted against a community of people. Yeah, exactly right. That's what gets into what I'm interested in, which is in politics and how, you know, model making and model construction and sharpening and, you know, refining our understanding of what's out there, you know, gets sort of reconstituted and represented for, you know, a public. So we, I mean, there are lots of historical examples of evidence being put before a jury and a jury decides based on very subjective and very… Absolutely. No, no, no, absolutely. No, I completely agree and this is to be honest with you, this actually is also happening in the history of science as well.

Right. In the sense that, for example, think of like, you know, I'm sure that Ian knows about so many of this stuff. You know, for example, someone under influence, you know, ran over someone. Okay? And so of course this needs to be held against certain kinds of law protocols in the justice system. But the whole point is that the majority of these cases where the jury have to actually, you know, kind of renegotiate the scope of this problem, they get so emotional in the sense that they fall for their own biases.

The same thing about science. Well, look at climate change, for example. Yes, yes, absolutely. Exactly what's happening with climate change right now is we see this sort of developing in the last year for a supposed Green New Deal. You can see the gap between these very complex and intricate theoretical models or models that are modeling climate change, history and projections into the future, and how those how those kind of make it into the political sphere. And what happens to them is they get transformed. Into bipolar scenarios. Exactly. This kind of like a naive, what you might call to be denialism, which we are getting right now in the U.S.,

or this kind of naive heroification and critical idea, which actually lead to fundamental human resignation. Oh, well, you know, everything that humans did on this planet contributed to the ruin of the planet. So maybe we should actually do nothing. You know, those kinds of bipolarities should be fundamentally dismissed. Right. Yeah, the question for me is how do we bring, you know, the clarity and the understanding we get from the model into the political realm? Like, how do we extend it into, you know, maintaining its clarity and its effectiveness at sort of helping us refine what we are, you know, the observable phenomenon we see out there, rising temperatures, sea levels, sea life disappearing, you know, species, all of that.

Those are all the observable phenomenon. So what, you know, I guess that's my question is what do we do? Like, how do we extend the model? Do we extend the model into a modeling of politics, for example? I would say that we cannot do extend the model. Well, you see, precisely because the extension of the model requires for us to, in fact, explain the theoretical context within which a model has been built, right? All models are theoretical entities. Right. And to that extent, and this is, I think, that is really a cause of this bipolarity,

precisely because we simply think of models as independent, context-independent entities, where we can simply shuffle them around across different domains of discourse. But that is not really the case. In order for us to, in fact, expand the application or the import of a specific model to different contexts, we should first explain and talk about the theoretical system or infrastructure within which the model is embedded. and this is this is a task I would say of philosophy

a philosophy of science a scientist all of the three categories are failing at this job at this point and hence we are getting all these kinds of rabbit denialism and romantic longing for the planet those two sort of irrational responses too. Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. Hey, can I just jump in with sort of one more thing to button up? Absolutely. Yeah. Regarding the leg you didn't like, I would almost say it's not that the world will save us from our models as implementation leads to the real in the world, but that the dynamism

of the world means the model must also be dynamic and the viciousness of the circularity comes from treating the model as static. so that so I think I don't know I completely understand this yeah thank you so much but the thing is that we should we should understand you see this is this is where basically I really do suggest to all of you read the work of sellers the idea of the myth of the given it is the most vicious assault on pre-critical philosophy. The whole point is that how can we in fact posit reality as a dynamic phenomenon as if it is changing and as if it is resisting you know our

are methods to capture it epistemologically or practically. Well, if we say that this is what reality is, then we should explain how did we arrive at such a claim? Because this is a piece of knowledge. To have a piece of knowledge, you have to justify it. obviously you cannot have you cannot explain this by again have a recourse to say that well this is what reality is that would be exactly what the myth of the given is so all of this stuff that we talk about reality as this kind of complex dynamics

with regard to our methods of theorization and practice coming in fact again from how we theorize and make conceptualizations about reality. To think of reality as if it is beyond the domain of conceptualization, that would be again a step back into that kind of medieval worldview that we have so far graduated to some extent. So let's have a break but before the break any real polemical I'm not interested

in niceties at this point i want the real polemics who does have the real polemic here i don't know that i have a real polemic but i'm having a difficult time reconciling what you just call the um polarity if everything went down into this point is wrong and then the opposite of this is also why I find Tucker's books so unbearable where he always suggests that you should just do nothing and give up but never derive anything from life or do nothing because it's ultimately a bunch of your failure I don't really know climb out of this clarity dough without looking not so much on doing but

at being which to me precedes doing because how do we escape repeating the the same mistakes and doing if we are being as we are really don't know we aren't being as we are then how do we be different before we start doing well you see repetition of mistakes is not guaranteed but you see the whole point is that against Eugene who is a great friend of mine I have infinite respect for him but also so many of these kinds of thinkers really think that life actually gives us a value nature gives us a value I would say that you probably

don't actually know what a value is where did you get this value from if not by epistemological and axiological justification of the values that nature supposed to give you nature literally dumb and deaf from an epistemological perspective from an epistemological don't get me wrong from an epistemological perspective it just doesn't reveal you any secret so any claim that you ever make about nature is actually an epistemological claim in disguise and to

that extent you have to justify exactly where do you derive this claim from how How can you justify it? But you can go even one step further by saying that the very reason that I can, in fact, justify any claims is precisely because I am beholden to the organ of justification, reasoning that i do believe in such a thing as to make give and ask reasons about what i say and what i act and to be a good reasoner to be a good justifier and also ultimately to be a good

epistemologist you have to reveal and explore the hidden assumptions that are followed by your line of reasoning and also those hidden consequences which follow from your reasoning other than that I just simply do not understand when people say that, well, you know, nature is such and such. You know, how did you come across this? And I see this, the same thing about the Marxists. I'm not talking about, you know, great Marxists, the good Marxists.

Like the kind of traditional Kich Marxists are so prevalent today. They say capitalism is bad. Well, why is capitalism bad? You have to justify it. Why capitalism is good? You have to justify. These are normative claims. To have a normative claim, you in fact need to take the idea of justification seriously in the first place. Shall we have a brief thingy and then we will come back with fictionalism, false models

and so on and so forth? Sounds good to me. Excellent. See you in seven minutes. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

My apologies for being a little bit grumpy today, I don't have many cigarettes. But in response, another thing that I was thinking about, Mary's question, you see, Sure, you know, I identify myself with a hopeless romantic leftist. And unfortunately at this point leftism is just romanticism, to be honest with you. We have failed to come up with a concrete method that can effectively and concretely implement our vision of the world.

And regardless of whether our vision of the world is utterly Stalinist or something more akin to Plato's idea of a non-place, a utopia. But regardless of that, the reason that I am absolutely hostile more to these traditional Kitsch Marxists than to people like Noor Reactionaries or Alt-Right is precisely because I think they have done a greatest damage to us than those people. Why? You know, let's, for example, talk about a very, very important, but nevertheless, popular question, like the death of the planet.

So you say, why is capitalism bad? You know, of course, some people will say, because it kills the planet. But then you ask the question, but why is the death of the planet actually important? You know, the majority of extant species have already gone extinct. We are also going extinct. So why this third dung, I'm saying not third rock, third dung from the sun actually has an exception against other kinds of stuff that have gone going on in the history of the cosmological evolution.

Why is that? We need to actually care about this problem. Well, we have to pay attention to this problem. But then you cannot just simply say that the death of the planet is something of this significant import. You have to justify it. And you cannot justify it simply by basically going in circle and saying that, well, because it's capitalist, because it's the death of the planet, the death of capitalism, death of planet, so on and so forth.

You have to really justify it to say that precisely because it supports cognitions, theoretical and practical, because the survival of the planet for the time being allows us to expand our cognitions, to survive, to value other kinds of life that might be on this planet. And these are all epistemological justification. These are all normative claims. And the thing is that Marxists want to have this kind of stuff without actually understanding what normativism is, what reasoning is, and what it's supposed to do.

And this is why I am absolutely the enemy number one of such Marxists before I become an enemy of alt-right or for that matter, no reactionary, so on and so forth. if you're a capitalist you could say the dead of the planet would mean the end of capitalism so they really have to be bad because the capitalism will end with the end of the planet and then we can move yes yes but of course not in the nicklandian vision nicklandian vision capitalism is a cosmological realm so even if you terminate the planet it will survive God bless the clan.

But you see, these are all actually, I should be honest with you, the more I have thought about these issues, I see that the majority of this alt-rightist stuff, no reactionary stuff are actually on the same side of the kind of bad Marxism that we get today in academia. Yes. They are purely having the same sets of premises. It's just that there are consequences of difference. Oh, yeah, I'd like to say, Reza, you're making great points.

I've actually read in your work before and have taken into a lot of consideration. So I wanted to thank you for sort of like reiterating those because I think that they're very, very strong claims. and but one of those things that I'm wondering is is is how are we and I guess this might be off this is very off topic but how do you go along justifying because I have a very hard time myself sort of identifying with this sort of saying that I would be left as this as what you would say these kitsch marxists have have absolutely sort of like abandoned the premise of

commons of commonality for this kind of atomized individuation of certain things which i think is is is empirically very anti-marxist in many many ways so like but one of those things i say is what do you say? What do you say? How do you reclaim this thing? Because I talk to all these people and I see all these people and they don't seem to have any sort of reason, as you said, or any sort of criteria that's rooted in what's happening for what they're trying to accomplish or say

they are existing within the same conservative dimension as the right so like that's one of the things that i'm saying like you know if i say i'm a this or that or i even say one good thing about marks i have to like kind of shudder you know because i feel so like i don't want to be well categorized to be honest with you i don't think that i have I have a full answer for your question. In the sense that I have a semblance of answer, but this is not a concrete answer. My answer would be that Marxism, since 20th century onwards, fundamentally diverged from the rationalist ambitions of Marx himself.

Of course, there are residues and there is a reason for it, precisely because there are residues of this kind of anti-rationalism in Marx, but they are not by any means hostile to reason. They are kind of like the self-critique of reason. But then you see in the 20th century that they are basically below and out of proportion in the sense that they become anti-rationalists. I would say that the first step is to go back to the rationalist roots of Marx. Try to justify. History is a science and all science have to abide by the rationalist method. There is no question out of it.

Now, but is it really going to solve the problem? No, absolutely not. I do not know how this problem will be solved. Nevertheless, we can take this first step and until then I would say that every question is on the table. I really don't know. Well, that actually clarifies a lot of the sort of questions that I've been having about how we define reason based on a premise of scientific rationality because that actually answers a lot.

That was basically what I wanted to know in terms of my… No, absolutely. You see Marx Althusser in his controversies... Can someone please give me the actual title? Is this controversies about the human? The collection of Althusser's collection? Something like that. You can definitely find it online. So, I think in Chapter 5, It's an essay where Althusser gives a fantastic account of the Marxian project, Marx and Engels, in the sense that Marx's ultimate idea is not about communism, is not about...

Well, yeah, it is about communism, but not communism in the kind of a vulgar sense. It is about to understand human history as a scientific enterprise. as a scientific enterprise. Now, how do you go on and unravel the human history as a scientific enterprise, such that you create a political movement which responds to the exigencies of such scientific enterprise? This is a task of communism. Okay.

I did my inoculations of Barrett. So let's get back to our... Sorry, did you mean the humanist controversy by Althusser? Yes, that's it. That's it. That's it. Yes. I was looking here. Yeah. Yeah. Humanist controversy. The humanist controversy. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. That is absolutely the one. Yes. So let me get back to our own trivial lessons with regard to fictionalism and false models, such that we can go to toy models. Okay.

So, one of the things that we have talked about, concrete models, mathematical models, and computational models, in the Weisbergian sense. And of course, we know that Weisberg thinks that computational models, for example, Schilling's model of segregation, is in fact a subset of mathematical models. Okay? But we criticized some of these assumptions earlier on. Regardless, whether we think that mathematical models are subsets of computational models

or vice versa, one thing is still on the table as an open question. And what is that? the idea that all mathematical models or if you are pro computationalism all computational models are fictions are fictions which make our scientific models very appealing but appealing in what sense well Weisberg is not really

so so this is this is called a fictionalism and fictionalism for now I I would call it a make-believe game. A make-believe game. Like believe that there are, you know, for example, in the solar system, 300,000 celestial bodies. make-believe game that diamorphism is not really a great model. We should talk about three or four sexes.

You know, such and such scenarios. Now the thing is that Weisberg himself in simulation similarity is not really a professional approach he for example thinks about fictionalism in a very what you might call to be I don't know, not provincial, but nevertheless restricted sense in the sense that fictionalism only pertains to models in general which have been shown to be false.

But beyond this Weisbergian account of models, we can in fact talk about so many other fictionalist accounts of modeling. The first view is a simple fiction account which says that mathematical models are imaginary systems that would be concrete if they were real Weisberg page 49

As purported confirmation of it, for example, consider what John Maynard Smith writes. He says, I'm not going to go over the complex equation. So basically what he says, imagine a population of replicating RNA molecules. There is some unique sequence, S, that produces copies at a rate R. All other sequences produce copies at a lower rate, R.

A sequence produces an exact copy of itself with probability Q. Now, within this formulation, any imaginary population of RNA does not exist. Then it cannot be, if it does not exist, then it cannot be similar to any target system of interest. If they are to share properties, then they both must exist. Hence, they cannot be similar. right you see here coming back to Ian's idea that fictionalism in modeling is essentially a way

a problematic way not a you know a clear cut way a problematic way to to go beyond the vicious circle of similarity with regard to how a model is applied to another model or a physical phenomenon in the world. So fictionalism essentially tries to suspend in a Hegelian sense, sublates, aufheben, basically the idea of similarity,

the idea of correspondence, the idea of representation between a model and a real physical phenomenon. But for what reason? Can anyone tell me? For what reason fictions are useful when applied to the real world phenomenon? Adam? Justin? Well, one thing is they're comprehensible within the memory space of human working memory.

So you can actually explore them in different aspects within the human working memory and therefore interrogate them in ways that more complex systems can't be directly interrogated. Okay. Thank you. Any other person on this issue? Jovan, you did the wrong thing. your thoughts on sideline now you have to talk yeah um in the weisberg uh book he talks about

fiction i mean he dismisses fiction as something that's really folk ontological and it's something that i've been right right struggling with and i actually talked to laurel about this but i think um yeah like fictions provide analog as a possibility i'm just interested in how fiction is not something that is equated with the imaginary and so yeah and so I think that's the question that you're asking right right so basically I talked to Michael and yes is is you know quite adamant about his stance against fictionalism in modeling. But

I'm probably, you know, distorting Michael's. If he was here, he would have defended himself. But let's say that at this point, my critique of Michael Weisberg is the idea that he really does not understand what fiction actually means. You see, when we are talking about fictions in the scientific domain, we are talking about modalities, possibilities, counterfactuals, so on and so forth, each of which can be formalized by the resources of contemporary logic.

And essentially in that sense, there are absolutely not what you might call to be these kinds of wishy-washy, whimsical stuff that people just throw in around like the scholastics. I would say that from what I have talked to Michael and from what I have read from his essays and books, he appears to me as a kind of ironic empiricist in a Szilardian way.

The Irenic empiricist is like a peaceful empiricist in the sense that he believes in the rational resources by which we can arrive at certain evidences, talk about them coherently, so on and so forth. right? This is the ironic empiricist, peaceful empiricist. Has a kind of a modest harmony between the observation, observational data, sense data, and, you know, the rational justification. So he is a kind of, I would say that I might be completely wrong, but this is a class, I'm going to talk about my own idea.

from what I have talked to him he seems to me is an ironic empiricist in that sense but then as you know the polemicists of rationalists would have told you how can you in fact observe something if not through some sort of fictions. These fictions are not really fictions in an ordinary sense. They are like modalities, the vocabulary of possibility, alethicism, so on and so forth.

for us. Essentially when we say like like the example of the match that we have been making and Jean-Pierre also brought it up today. You see how can we in fact that we are in lighting up a match as opposed to a log of an elm tree. Why is that it reacts to such and such constraints in such and such ways, you know, when we strike a safety match on a frictional surface such and such as

uh reza one second i think someone accidentally muted you can you unmute yourself maybe any person who mutes me needs to be asked the worst kind of questions at this point anyway let me let me go with Jovan's idea so basically why I was saying that yes so you see the point is that when we are talking about for example a match happen you know when you strike

a match against the friction surface it appears to us as a kind of an empirical simple observation But this is not really. Precisely because you can introduce this kind of scenario in many different ways, where the match is wet, where the match is being lit in the vacuum, where the match doesn't have sulfur, where the match doesn't have oxidizing agents, where the match stick is made of iron instead of wood. And each of these actually fundamentally change the kind of empirical reports that you could come up with with regard to the lightning of a match.

so fictionalism in this sense actually refined but also determined in a Hegelian sense determined the idea of the empirical observation Jovan? Yeah, this is... I'm not sure... Okay, so a huge... Well, a part of my research is exactly on this point, but I don't see fiction within the domains of the Hegelian idea.

Insofar as... Tell me if I'm wrong, if I'm misinterpreting you, but it's the idea that allows you to switch registers or domains, So domains by means of which you can say this will lead to empirical outcomes or that will lead to other kinds of outcomes. But there's something, there's another way of fiction that I'm understanding it where we talked a lot about this in our class. Maybe Artemis or Lenka can help me out. But it's about ways in which Ways in which the capacity of knowing... Yeah, I'm not sure how I can put this.

It's just, I'm just... No, go on, please. Go on, please. Don't worry about it. Yeah, like in the sense that, for example, okay, one example is within the Ecole Mine School of Paris, they figured out a kind of... it's not a schema, but a way of saying like C, it's called a CK theory. So it's like concept multiplied by knowledge equals theory. And so in that engineering like scheme, the way in which they use fiction is the kind of variable impetus. And this was in fact like one of, this came, like this comes out of my conversation with, with Anne Francoise. and francois which is that there is a way in which you can understand fiction that is not

imaginary but also not merely part what do you mean what do you mean imaginary imagine imaginary in the sense that um like i think weisberg was hit as a kind of folk ontology as a kind of supplement to the way in which we we inform um the construction of so for weisberg i But you see, Weisberg, to be honest with you, I think that he really understands fictionalism in the most naive sense, in the sense that he absolutely thinks of fictionalism as what you might call to be Kant-Orthodox, Kant 101, about productive imagination.

But this is really not what fictionalism is. is actually a logical realm where you propose a different alternative once you have actually worked out the possible ways that the logical infrastructure or the logical view of your observation here and now basically attaches to certain kinds of observations which might not be real from the phenomenalistic or empirical standpoint

but nevertheless they can enrich it. So what are they enriching, like the discourse of the real? Or at least like the discourse by means of which we understand? No, the discourse of modality. The discourse of modality is what enriches the empirical observation. Real doesn't give us anything about what might be. Essentially I do really believe in the Humean thesis that nature is just the order of is in the most rudimentary sense. And by that I don't mean a Parmenidian understanding of being as is, but in the Humean sense.

But the whole point is that this is really what you might call to be the order of appearances. But in order to push against the order of appearances, you should be capable of investigating the order of what it might be. In your human sense, yeah. Yes, yes. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, I think I agree with you. Thank you. Absolutely, absolutely. Okay. Sorry, sorry.

Don't worry. Don't have panic fits. We are going to cover all the grounds in the sessions yet to come. can someone please I forgot what I was actually talking about Theo the question that no before all of that thing oh I don't remember the last thing you said before question okay okay let me let me let me figure it out myself um

you were talking about uh weisberg's uh position as an empiricist and uh and the defense of fictionalism as as being something different from what he understands yes yes thank you thank you so much uh so basically So the thing is that Weisberg actually is not that kind of naive anti-fictionalist person that you might think of. When you look at his book, Weisberg considers three more detailed accounts of fiction.

is that David Lewis, another one is Walton and the other one is Levy. On Lewis' account, P, I believe that P is true in fiction, F if and only if the counterfactual P would have been true had F been told as a known fact. Let me repeat it. So this is a kind of a Louisian, David Lewis idea of fictionalism with regard to his idea of moral realism

and possible words. On Lewis' account, P is true in fiction f if and only if the counterfactual p would have been true had f capital f been told as known fact is true in every belief world of the author's community A belief world of some community, in this sense, is any possible world where all the overt beliefs of the community are true. true. So consider a world in which the stories of Sherlock Holmes are told as

known fact and where the belief of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his compatriots are true. This is a world in which it is true that Sherlock Holmes lives on Baker Street. Hence, it is fictionally true for us. Analogously, Maynard Smith's RNA model description is fictionally true in so far as they are asserted as known fact and the beliefs of Maynard Smith and his compatriots are true in at least one possible world. Now,

like many philosophers, Lewis's model realism leaves us with an incredulous stare, as the quote David Lewis. We simply find it too epistemically costly to accept the existence of non-actual possible worlds of which we can have no epistemic access. Now Kendall Walton's account of fiction is importantly different from David Lewis and involves props, principles of generation,

and make-believe in tandem with the fictionalist thesis. In a game of make-believe, there are props about which participants agree to certain conventions, i.e. principles of generation. When the props are present, they make believe certain states of affairs to be, in fact, the case. For example, if we agree that three stumps are bears or images of green slime on a movie screen are a monster, then we see those props.

we may believe that our bears or monsters presents respectively. In fact, we may even have quasi-emotions towards them, such as quasi-fears towards the greenest slime. Moreover, in our respective games, it will be fictionally true There are bears or monsters present respectively. Thus, props and principles of generations of generation generate fictional truths.

with respect to Maynard Smith's RNA model, presumably the prop is the model description, and given the convention amongst population genesis, we make believe that they are true, and they are in the relevant game of make-believe. So, what I would like to talk about this is just that, you know, many of you, I'm sure that coming from the content of philosopher, you know, trajectory, you know, the legacy

of high precision and CCRU, the kind of radical fictionalism. And yes, there are actually fictionalism in a very stern and strict way of epistemology. though that none of these what you might call to be trends actually talk about what they are actually trying to do. But nevertheless this is exactly what we are dealing with. Make-belief gains what is exactly the significance of make-believe gains for reality we try to

explicate this is the very thesis of fiction no matter how much you see those fictions as out there adam Adam you don't need to smile, just say it.

Okay, so Adam requires one moment. Jean-Pierre, Ian, Lenka, Marie, Joven, Justin, and the rest. do we get to differentiate between truthful fictions and what i would call a bad or untruthful

fiction or this concept is impossible because then the question would be like not only the of the value of fictions but in particular what kind of fictions because right right right yes absolutely yes fictionalism in the realm of logic or the realm of theory is a fiction like a good fiction you see uh for example uh when when i say a good fiction It's a fiction in which no matter how much plot holes you have, no matter how much lies and falsities you have proposed, they nevertheless cohere according to some source of possible logic.

Right? They cohere. They have some sort of criteria of consistency and truth. even if that truth has no correspondence with any canonical truth or trueness in an empirical sense. Right? It's just that what you might call to be, this is a good fiction. Right, like the rainbow is entirely made up and at the same time... Yes, yes, absolutely. Like a war and peace of told story. surely it is which is still today as actual model for navigating through political problems that we experience yes absolutely and then you get a

different kind of fiction a fiction like what you might call to be Donald Bartholomew Donald Bartholomew postmodernist story about a kind of impossible world where everything is just in contradiction with one another. Now I would say that these both of these worlds are actually respectable fictional worlds. It's just that we have quite great resources at this point to talk about a fictional world like such as Tolstoy with regard to how it can be ever applied to reality

or other models well we don't have that many resources to actually talk coherently about improbability, about impossibility, about a world that is made out of pure contradictions. So you see, fictionalism is not just about possibility. It's also about impossibility. It's just that the kind of logic that we do have at this point are more on the side of possibility rather than impossibility of worlds. Because impossibility of worlds

requires fundamental different kinds of logics to capture them. Of course, there are some like paraconsistent logic, so on and so forth, but there are, I would say, there are still very rudimentary to capture what impossibility, what pure contradiction means. And sometimes we need to look at our models about the world from the perspective of purely impossible logics. Questions, questions, heckling.

Few people are twitching in their seats. What would be the coherence criteria then, if you can change the axiom? For which one? For a fictional world. Is there a coherentist strategy or something like that? If the justification for being a good fiction has to do with coherence, and if you can change the axioms as to change from classical logic to paraconsistent logic to dialetheism or

something like that what would be what would be the criteria the criteria for for a good fiction I mean it's really hard to answer yeah the thing I would say that when I'm saying the criteria of coherence in a good manian sense the criteria of coherence, fundamental changes from a possible world to an impossible world. So far we have talked about possible worlds, the world of what

you might call to be respectable modalities, right? But then we haven't talk that much about impossible worlds, which are also respectable fiction. I absolutely, I think this is not something that a philosopher can talk about coherently in a naive sense. It is something that a logician can only answer. What would be the criteria of coherence within world which is made of pure, determinate contradictions. Paraconsistent logic tries to address some of these questions, like priests and so on so forth.

I don't think that they are actually fundamentally what you might call to be on the side of this kind of purely impossible in the realm of David Lewis. Yeah, it's very local, I think. The contradiction there is very local. It just arises at some point and they say, either you have to solve it through type theory, because you have to solve the contradiction in the upper level, or you have to accept the contradiction this is like priests which is options yes yes absolutely yes yes no I I really don't know I I think that this is something that

a you know we probably have to wait until some new revolutions happen in the round of modalities logic and computation Until then, yes, as you said, the kind of ideas that we get at this point with regard to the impossible worlds are fundamentally unsatisfying, to be honest. Let me ask you something. Do you believe in real contradictions? Absolutely, I do believe in real contradictions. But what do you mean by real contradictions? One, what do you mean by real and what do you mean by contradiction?

Yeah, that's tricky. I would say something that is, of course, a phenomenon in the sense that it is something that is already taken to be something in the language, that is not purely given. And in terms of this set, of this connection, is encapsulated by a contradiction, by something that is a hole in our commonsensical logic of phenomena, something like this. Yes, yes. And I'm glad that you put it in this way, precisely because I was trying to already

make a counter-attack, a preemptive counter-attack against you, if you say that real actually give us something. So I'm glad that you say that these are not givens, but these are kind of logical... No, I'm a Szilardzian. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I cannot basically bait a Szilardzian at this point. So the whole point is that, okay, so these are, you know, this phenomenon, this phenomenon, they are indexed by certain kinds of logical vocabularies and indexes. Now, what do you call a real contradiction at this point?

Well, to the extent that you have already mentioned, that real contradiction is not about the world. It's about how the logical conceptual vocabularies index the experiential phenomena. But at this point, I actually would say a very, very naive, disappointingly so, example from Brando. This is red. So this is red, this means that this is colored. For something to be this is red means that this is not blue, this is not white, this is not black, this is not white.

A chain of inferences within a web of concepts. Imagine a world in which this is read in a Carnapian sense, the real value numbers that are attributed to the place and the time of this observation correspond with the values. of the same kinds of observations for the same kind of predicates such that in the natural ordinary language you would say that this is red and this is blue this is a real contradiction I'm not sure I understood this this this example in what sense there's a contradiction there well

Just because they are colored, because it's encapsulated in the same category, something can be contradictory. As I read, as I understand Brandon, I think he, nevertheless, he pictures himself as a Hegelian. He subscribes to the law of contradiction, to Aristotelian logic, fundamentally, I think. I don't think Brandon accepts contradictions only in the sense that something excludes being by being a excludes being B so absolutely no absolutely Brandon does not buy into real contradiction but you might think of his criteria of exclusion a soft criteria

for real contradiction in a sense that you know within the realm of a scientific modeling when we say that this is red obviously we are making such a claim within an ordinary language but this is just you know what you might call to be the wishy-washy stuff we have to attribute or assign certain kinds of values to lightness hue and saturation of such a color within such temporal coordinates, right?

And then you say that this is red. Obviously it has different lightness, hue and saturation within different kinds of spatiotemporal coordinates. Now, even if we don't believe in the kind of Brandomian or any kind of logical, in a higher sense, real contradiction between red object and blue object, you still need to explain why is that. within the realm of those rudimentary elementary experiences which have been couched in terms of

theoretic predicates with real value real valued numbers they don't correspond okay why is that I don't really know. Well, I don't know either. I'm just merely trying to challenge you at this point. Yes, I understand. Obviously, the question comes back to this idea that whenever we are trying to model a specific aspect of reality, no matter how rudimentary it is, how elementary it is,

and how stringently we are trying to model this phenomenon by way of set theory, category theory, so on and so forth we come across a very specific problem like exactly what Jean-Pierre was talking about Like the observation of the color blue and the observation of the color red. So within the realm of the ordinary natural language, we can do weasel around between the color blue and red

and somehow try to get them together. But this is not the realm of science. This is the realm of a natural ordinary language. In the realm of science, we are more likely working with something like a set theoretic predicates of our observational statements, in the sense that blue has such lightness, such saturation, such hue. Each of these three are assigned with a specific real number valued, like Photoshop, 1, 2, 3, 1, 0, 2, 0, 24, whatever you think.

and the same thing about the color of red okay in that sense and of course our observations since the time of Kant we know that all of our observations are time or especially temporally stamped in the sense that our particular observations with regard to particular phenomenon in the world are always specific in time and space. We cannot simply extend what we have observed at time t1 place p1 to what we have observed at time t2 place p2.

A map of correspondence should be made between the two, such that we can determine the exact correlation between these two forms of elementary experiences. Now, here a problem arises. We say that, you know, I saw within the table of hue, lightness, hue and saturation, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 2. Element at time T1, P1, place T1, and also at time T2, place T2.

Now, how can we in fact bring these two elementary observations together? That is really the question that we have been asking ourselves since the time of Plato and Kant. Maybe someone can enlighten us here. How can these two observations be correlated? Someone please.

Theo. you are the grand skeptic go on I'm not entirely sure I'm kind of working on something with this let's think about this. So we are talking about distinctions and similarities between two elementary experiences. The observation of a blue dot and the observation of a red dot. At time t1 place p2,

to, sorry, p1 and at the time t2 and place t2. In what sense can we actually somehow correlate them with one another, such that we can in fact compare them with another. We can determinately make distinction between the two, so on and so forth. I mean I think I'm understanding just like the very very basics of what you're trying to get at which is how the temporal determining aspects of

cognition allow for certain types of contradiction yeah I it's a doozy of somewhat mundane answer would be that you have to segregate them you can't you can't have really a contradiction at the logical level because you have to segregate them and attribute the difference to states of the perceptual

apparatus something like that well here here I would say that if Karnap was a lie, he would actually challenge you at this point. So you see, the very fact that you observe a phenomenon, a blue phenomenon, a blue dot and a red dot, at various times and places, T1, P1, and T2, P2, surely it can apparently perceptually distinguish from a very rudimentary sense. But then you find yourself in a Solarzian dilemma here, and also a Carnapian with a Sinian

dilemma in the sense that how can you at the level of pure perception what yeah can you distinguish them if not by recourse to your logical conceptual vocabularies because anything that you can do at that very rudimentary level would count as a variance of the myth of the given yes yes have you read just just have I'm curious have you read the essays by Harry Flint no no no I haven't

I haven't yeah it is like this this maverick philosopher who started as a Carnapian and then proceeds in his own words to destroy logic and mathematics because of these kind of contradictions. Yes. Something like this. He has these very short essays. Everything is online. Everything is like one page essays. Can you spell his name on the sidebar? Yeah, he's also a musician and he's an artist. He's a very important figure for me, but I don't agree. who can be my friend for life. Yeah, he lived in New York. I'm actually meeting him in March when I see you too. Yes, no, absolutely. I mean, to be honest with you,

the more you go to these kinds of fundamental philosophical problems with regard to modeling, with regard to how we, in fact, coordinate our symbolic conceptuals with rudimentary representations, sensory representations, the more I have seen that the room gets wider for giving us more opportunities for a skepticism. The kind of a skepticism that we always tried in the first place to avert, to avoid, because skepticism, for many philosophers, is seen as some sort of, you know, stifling gesture.

But to be honest with you, I'm a reborn skeptic at this point. I actually do believe why Hegel adopted a skeptical, pyronic paradigm in his method of talking about how reason relates to the world. that I think was one of the greatest moves instead of he adopts by a kind of passive skepticism where the skeptic overcomes the rationalist he turned skepticism into an engine of reason

and I don't really at this point think that So any kind of rationalist investigation with regard to the world or our position in the world can go on without a morsel or a facet of skepticism. Skepticism be my God. That's what I would say. We shall investigate. Okay, the last questions, I'm sorry that we didn't again, but don't worry, we will go have some free sessions at the end, we will make sure that everything will be covered.

Sometimes it's actually good to just hear about what you think, how you do challenge the materials that we have presented so far and so forth. So, we have like four minutes literally. Anyone who wants to say something very very offensive. Go on, I know that some of you would like to do it. you disappoint me you don't have anything offensive to say what kind of philosophy course is this

i have stuff that i've been wanting to okay go on And to be honest, it's something that I feel like has been a tracking problem throughout the court up to now. and I think it I'm wanting to like tether the conversation back to Kant just for the purposes of investigating Kant's own project and kind of map out a

trajectory after that from maybe perhaps like the consequences of the so-called transcendental turn or of the critical distinction and I'm curious to just see well few may one second interrupt you many of us in this class don't know exactly what the gesture of the transcendental consists of. Would you be able to very briefly to say to everyone what transcendental term in a Kantian sense consists of? I think actually it's

better to characterize what Kant sees as the critical distinction rather than thinking about what transcendental means because I think as I understand Kant there's a lot of confusion about what transcendental means. But the critical distinction is just that it's a way of introducing doubt into the relation of thought to the relation of things. And I mean, my sense is that there's

a looming problem in the critical distinction too that I think, you know, we could also maybe go back to certain problems that are happening in Plato's ideas too with universals and relations between universals and particulars maybe but there's hmm I'm curious if there's a way to resolve that problem to begin with and what the motivations for drawing that distinction are and the consequences if we accept the distinction. Don't you think that this is actually a version of what Ian has been putting forward so far?

It's essentially the idea of the, I mean, don't think about the model and the phenomenon in the strict sense that we have been talking about. that can also be expanded to the very problem of how universals, universal namely the realm of ideas or rules, are being applied to realm of particular experiences. Yeah, I think that there's a deep commonality there personally. and I think that there's a contradiction in Kantianism that tries to get worked out. As far as I understand, the German idealist tradition is that there's a contradiction in

Kantianism that tries to get fleshed out through the expansion of rationalism and the elimination of things in themselves. I'm skeptical of that as it as a viable alternative. And I'm open to hearing like pushback, but I think there's a point at which the dialogue no longer becomes like possible. That my sense is that there's a point at which, which, and I don't want to absorb the class time that much, but I think it is kind of some issue that I find important, is that there is this kind of all-consuming tendency

of the rationalist project, and I'm not sure that there's like a way to resolve it in some coherent way. Right. Right. And, I mean, one of the ways that I've heard it talked about is that rationalism actually poses a threat to reason. But why are you actually posing the question of rationalism? You could easily say that the empiricist project fails as well. What I actually want to know, and this is actually what I actually would like to know from so many people who actually always come up with some sort of opposition to the rationalist project,

is that so you think that rationalism project doesn't really uh you know live up to its ambitions with regard to this question i'm completely fine with it but why wouldn't you in fact to pose this question from an empiricist perspective why why we always need to talk about the condemnation of the rationalist project. Do you have anything as an alternative to the rationalist project? Or you think that the rationalist project is really the platform and we should be skeptical of its methods such that we can refine them?

Which I'm completely fine with that. I mean I think that the my immediate reaction if you don't mind me responding more is that I'm immediately I'm feeling like you have to accept the rationalist project at some level but if rationalism if the if reason is the sole criteria for what counts I don't I don't see that as any longer rationalist project in some ways or maybe sure no I agree I agree so I'm simply trying to force you to elaborate your own position

in the sense that so you do not believe in a kind of naive empiric sense that simply the observational sense data will give us some knowledge of the world right well if this is a question I think that maybe there's different ways to think about I don't know I'm I'm not in a sellers expert but it seems like talk No, you see, I actually didn't say that the observational sense data doesn't give us anything. I said that it does not give us a knowledge of the world. In so far as knowledge is in the business of the rationalist method.

This is really important. and with regard to our modeling lesson as well. You see, models are not about the observational data. They are also about how we reason about the world. And of course, the question is still yet open. How we reason about the world can somehow, in one way or another, in a hypothetical sense, in a fictional sense, or another way, relate the kind of observational evidences that we garner either with naked eyes or through microscope technological instruments

from the world? And this is the ultimate question. Okay. I think everyone is getting tired. Everyone is getting sleepy, including me. Let's end this session. And by the way, we have two free sessions after our things to make sure that we go over all the necessary materials.

And still, I actually would love you guys to write down, writing is a very great way of you to explicitate, to make clear your own objections. I would absolutely love you, Theo, Jean-Pierre, Yandiz, Joven, Artemis, everyone, please do write your questions on a piece of paper so as to clarify them and come up with the kind of questions that we need.

And we already get a sense that we are doing so-called philosophy of science, and we are working about very, very sets of specific problems, but there are also these kinds of what you might call to be philosophical nasties, which are brewing up beneath whatever we are talking about with regard to the question of how reason can actually talk about observables, how they can be correlated, what we make sure of that our models are does and so, so on and so forth. These aren't the real questions. So please do

write your questions so we can hear about them. Okay comrades. See you next week. Bye. Love you guys. Take care. Thank you Reza. That was great. Have fun. Absolutely. Bye. Ciao.