62
rational framework; let alone extrapolate for our purpose of understanding the
underlying forces guiding or moderating human conscience. Hence, as with
Aristotle, emerges by way of alternative explanations, the realm of metaphysics.
That unknown country between concept and calculation. Or, as alleged within the
realm of idealization, a curious alternative to metaphysics, which Michael Strevens
offers as an intriguing approach. He writes, in describing the notion of an idea or
data pertaining to a “target phenomenon” as having been “idealized away” that
“This streamlining hints at one important function of idealization: it serves the pragmatic end of keeping calculations simple, either by making the mathematics more
tractable or by reducing the empirical demands of the model (for example, lowering
the number of and precision of the initial conditions and parameters whose values
must be determined in order to derive consequences from the model)”.
18
Our goal is to understand that which is allegedly evident, while the narrative is
self-realizing, propelled by rules of grammar, habit, and cumulative experience that
coalesce to engender a salient explanation of the human condition. But such a condition is but one condition, a circumstance, given to ratiocination and replication,
that describes in some accessible manner that which is an event within the volume
of propositional logic and calculus, prior to all variables. Such logic is the preexistent value without gradient or combination. A starting point that hopes to preempt bias, self-interest, or self-promotion. Anything less would simply connote a
self-referential tautology.
The problems involved in computational ecology, such as in the case of “plankton patchiness” and the breakdown in “conceptual modeling”,
19
only hamper our
facility for grasping the dilemma confronting humankind. The numbers, in so defying easy reach or a layman’s translation, compel that same aforementioned dissimulation, whereby horrors and bliss tend to travel together, leveling out somewhere
mid-center, in the blandest climes of geography and contemplation. This is precisely where the litany of ecological disasters becomes the normal context for all
remaining life forms.
Conceptualization itself defies such rationales and interpolation in as much as
logic—etymologically deriving from mid-fourteenth-century philosophical distinctions between true and untrue reasoning—cannot be said to be tied to, or derived
from, even un-delineated mental activity. For all we know, it is an emotional product; or psychologically divorced from the human brain, while centered in the mind.
These are all concepts, and their byproducts do not contain links that we either see
or can ever detect. We do not know where concepts come from, and whether their
18 See Strevens’ essay, “The Structure of Asymptotic Idealization,” p. 3, http://www.strevens.org/
research/expln/Asymptotics.pdf, Department of Philosophy, New York University, Accessed
January 13, 2019.
19 See “Computational ecology as an emerging science,” by Sergei Petrovskii and Natalia
Petrovskaya, Interface Focus, 2012 Apr 6; 2(2): 241–254. Published online 2012 Jan 5. doi: https://
doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2011.0083, PMCID: PMC3293204, PMID: 23565336, The Royal Society
Publishing, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3293204/, Accessed January 13,
2019.
7 Pathologies of Self-Image
rational framework; let alone extrapolate for our purpose of understanding the
underlying forces guiding or moderating human conscience. Hence, as with
Aristotle, emerges by way of alternative explanations, the realm of metaphysics.
That unknown country between concept and calculation. Or, as alleged within the
realm of idealization, a curious alternative to metaphysics, which Michael Strevens
offers as an intriguing approach. He writes, in describing the notion of an idea or
data pertaining to a “target phenomenon” as having been “idealized away” that
“This streamlining hints at one important function of idealization: it serves the pragmatic end of keeping calculations simple, either by making the mathematics more
tractable or by reducing the empirical demands of the model (for example, lowering
the number of and precision of the initial conditions and parameters whose values
must be determined in order to derive consequences from the model)”.
18
Our goal is to understand that which is allegedly evident, while the narrative is
self-realizing, propelled by rules of grammar, habit, and cumulative experience that
coalesce to engender a salient explanation of the human condition. But such a condition is but one condition, a circumstance, given to ratiocination and replication,
that describes in some accessible manner that which is an event within the volume
of propositional logic and calculus, prior to all variables. Such logic is the preexistent value without gradient or combination. A starting point that hopes to preempt bias, self-interest, or self-promotion. Anything less would simply connote a
self-referential tautology.
The problems involved in computational ecology, such as in the case of “plankton patchiness” and the breakdown in “conceptual modeling”,
19
only hamper our
facility for grasping the dilemma confronting humankind. The numbers, in so defying easy reach or a layman’s translation, compel that same aforementioned dissimulation, whereby horrors and bliss tend to travel together, leveling out somewhere
mid-center, in the blandest climes of geography and contemplation. This is precisely where the litany of ecological disasters becomes the normal context for all
remaining life forms.
Conceptualization itself defies such rationales and interpolation in as much as
logic—etymologically deriving from mid-fourteenth-century philosophical distinctions between true and untrue reasoning—cannot be said to be tied to, or derived
from, even un-delineated mental activity. For all we know, it is an emotional product; or psychologically divorced from the human brain, while centered in the mind.
These are all concepts, and their byproducts do not contain links that we either see
or can ever detect. We do not know where concepts come from, and whether their
18 See Strevens’ essay, “The Structure of Asymptotic Idealization,” p. 3, http://www.strevens.org/
research/expln/Asymptotics.pdf, Department of Philosophy, New York University, Accessed
January 13, 2019.
19 See “Computational ecology as an emerging science,” by Sergei Petrovskii and Natalia
Petrovskaya, Interface Focus, 2012 Apr 6; 2(2): 241–254. Published online 2012 Jan 5. doi: https://
doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2011.0083, PMCID: PMC3293204, PMID: 23565336, The Royal Society
Publishing, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3293204/, Accessed January 13,
2019.
7 Pathologies of Self-Image