Theory of Relevance vs. Theory of Relevance Realization
Argues can’t be a scientific Theory of Relevance
How science works:generate inductive generalization
Powerful way of reliably predicting the world
JS Mill: systematic import: science has to form categories, same type of thing, that support powerful inductive generalizations
Important properties for that category: Homogeneous
Wittgenstein: many categories don’t have essences
Some say no categories have essences, but that’s not true: ex: triangle
Quine: things like triangles are deductive essences, but science discovers inductive generalizations
Essentialism isn’t bad for things that have essences
Possible to do a science when we categorize things in a way that we have the essential properties of a thing
Reverse: we can’t have a scientific explanation of everything IF:
The category is not homogeneous
Does not support powerful inductive generalizations
Does not have an inductive essence
Doesn’t mean they don’t exist, just that can’t scientifically investigate them
Ex: can’t have a science of white things. Study white thing, what do I learn about it other than it is white?
No metaphysical implications
Ex: horses:
Seem to have an essence: if learn a lot about this horse will generalize to other horses -> veterinary medicine
Category stable
Properties must be intrinsic/internal/inherent: many objects have properties not intrinsic to object but rather object’s relationship to us (attributive properties): ex: money is money because we treat it as such, can’t do that with gold
Calling a bottle a bottle is attributive otherwise an object of a particular mass
Doesn’t mean that it’s false, just that can’t do science
Ex: Tuesday events
Relevance:
Does not have systematic import: like Tuesday events
Things that I find relevant, other than I find them relevant what do they have in common?
Class is not homogeneous
Not stable: not forever relevant
Internal or intrinsic to object? If there never been human beings could have relevance? Doesn’t seem so
Relevant seems to be relevant to someone or something
Relevance has to be relevant to an autopoietic thing (system capable of reproducing and maintaining itself)
Relevance not something for which can have a scientific theory, not intrinsic to something, no essence to relevance
Theory of RR can’t be a theory of relevance detection. Don’t detect relevance in the object
Analogy: Theory of Evolution
Before Darwin, people thought if studied the natural world could discover essence of how things were designed
Darwin: things don’t have an essential design
Evolutionary fitness: capacity to survive long enough to propagate species.
Fittedness: what is it about the organism that allows it to reproduce: no essential design.
But don’t need such a theory: need a theory about what is relevant, how an organism is fitted, constantly being designed, redefined by a dynamic process
Fittedness always redefining itself, constantly in a process of self-organization, no essence
Constantly adapting to the way the world is changing
Have a theory of the evolution of fittedness
Fittedness and the evolution of fittedness are the same thing
Darwin proposed dynamic systems theory of how fittedness evolves
Relevance analogous to biological fittedness.
Relevance = cognitive interactional fittedness
Need a theory of how it evolves
What if ability to:
Formulate problems
Form categories
Pick up on conveyance
Make inferences
Constrain the search space
Regulate a feedback loop. Sensory motor feedback loop -> sensing, integral to moving
Interact with the world, changes how sense it -> loop
Theory of Relevance Realization
What if there is a virtual engine regulating that sensory motor loop so that it is constantly evolving it’s cognitive interactional fittedness to its environment
Doesn’t have to come to any final essential way of framing the environment. Constantly evolving its cognitive fittedness to the environment.
So need a theory of relevance realizastion
Dynamical system for the self-organizing evolution of cognitive interactional fittedness
Would be:
Not humunculour
Consonant and continuous with how the organ (embodied brain) evolved
Need:
Set of properties are sub-semantic
Sub-syntactic
Have to ground out in establishing the agent-arena participation
Self-organizing processes
Multi-scale
Originally be ground out in autopoietic system
Bio-economical properties: think of biology as economic
Economy = self-organizing system constantly dealing with distribution of goods and serves, allocation and use of resources
Body is a bio-economy
We are organized so that the distribution of resources serves the contituative goal or preserving the bio-economy itself
So not semantic or syntactic
Multi-scale: simultaneous and top down
What kind of norms at work in a bio-economy:
Subsemantic: truth
Subanalytic: validity
Bio-economy: not dealing with logical, semantic norms, economies regulated by logistical norms
Logistics: study of proper disposition and use of resources
Logistical norms:
Efficiency
Resiliency: long term broadly applying efficiency
What if RR is this ongoing evolution of our cognitive interactional fittedness, virtual engine regulating sensory motor loop, and regulating it by regulating bioeconomy in terms of logistical norms like efficiency and resilience
Can describe all that scientifically
Multiscalular way in which bio-economy is organized to function:
Ex: autonomic nervous system, responsible for level of arousal: how much of metabolic resources converted to possibility of action
There is no final perfect design of level of arousal
Sympathetic system: biased, interprets world in a way to raise level of arousal
Para-sympathetic system: biased other way - looking for evidence to reduce arousal
Opposed in their goal, but interdependent in their function
Symnathetic always trying to arouse, para always trying to bring down. As environment changes, tug-of-war shifts around level of arousal
Opponent processing: level of arousal constantly evolving to fit the environment
Can’t be perfect
Vervaeke will argue that the embodied embedded braian uses opponent processing in a multi-scalar way in order to regulate bioeconomy so that it constantly optimizing your cognitive interactional fittedness to the environment
Efficiency and Resiliency:
In an opponent relationship: efficiency is a selective restraint, but if cut to the bone, all the efficiencies without remembering opponent relationship to resiliency, if one person sick no one to pick up slack, if unexpected change to the environment, noone can take it on
Need to be able to repair, restructure, redesign
If no redundancy, error floods the system
If too efficient, lose resiliency
What if have a virtual engine in the brain that makes use of the selective restraints of efficiency and the enabling restraints of resiliency and it bio-economically logistically shapes the sensory motor loop.