There's an App for that Desire

[alice wellintown]

Euclidian standards, the geometrical structure of visual space may become
indeterminate, or more likely trend toward the hyperbolic.

Since in the age-old tradition going back to Aristotle the characteristic
goal of all scientific or scholarly inquiry is theoretical understanding,
it is important to understand what theory does in modern science. A theory
explains why some event occurs (or does not occur) by providing a model of
the causes or conditions that control its occurrence (or non-occurrence);
its goal is experimental prediction and control. Alternatively, a theory
may explain a lawful regularity among empirical events by providing a model
of the causes or conditions that, if fulfilled, necessitate the lawful
regularity among these events.
To probe what is implied by this meaning of theory, I follow Heidegger
(1996, 357-364). He begins with a broken hammer and a construction project.
A hammer is a tool used in a construction project; a worker generally does
not ask what a hammer is until by bad luck he has to find a replacement for
it or a substitute. Only then he asks: what are the specifications of a
hammer (so that the project engaged in can be finished)? The answer will be
a theory (about hammers) that explains its ability to do a hammer's job in
carpentry or the building trades. In Carnap's terms: the *explicandum* is
'the ability to do a hammer's job,' the appropriate *explicans* is a theory
(of the hammer) which will give physical specifications for a hammer.

http://www.focusing.org/apm_papers/heelan.html



On Wed, Jun 19, 2013 at 5:54 PM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Some have suggested that seperating technic from science, or from
> human desire or motive is not worth considering because humans are
> technological, and sepaeration is not possible. In other words, to be
> human is to be technological, so we can't seperate human values from
> this activity. Birds fly. Humans make tools and engineer.
>
> But we were not born with tools or cell-phones as birds were born with
> wings. We were, of course, born with hands, and with these we fashined
> an extension, the hammer. And we projected a world, and we built it,
> and framed our view of it.
>
> -------------------------------------------
>
> The Carpentered Environment:
>
> Regardless of where in the brain of the human or animals an oblique
> effect is found, one would still like to know whether it is an
> inevitable consequence of the way neural signals are processed, or
> whether it is a minor error that nature hadn't been bothered to
> correct, or whether it fulfills a function in making us better in
> handling our visual environment. Proposing a "purpose" of the oblique
> effect, and developing scientific support for it, is work still in
> progress. A popular concept is that we live in a carpentered
> environment. Attempts at empirical explanations of perceptual visual
> phenomena have led to the examination of the orientation distribution
> of contours in the everyday visual world.[12]
>
> Competing explanations have to contend with questions, not yet
> finalized, of innateness of horizontal/vertical superiority, of body
> symmetry in anatomical organization, of methodology of measurement,
> and particularly, of issues associated with perceptual development in
> infants and children, and across cultures.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_effect
>
>
> On 6/19/13, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "ALL men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the
> > delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness
> > they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of
> > sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not
> > going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything
> > else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know
> > and brings to light many differences between things."
> >
> > -Aristotle
> >
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20130620/57f45b46/attachment.html>