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Elaborateness and Entropy as the Chief Ingredients of Complexity

I don’t think it’s debatable that while most people can accurately identify complexity, they can’t necessarily accurately describe either the phenomenon or the conditions of complexity. In the real world complexity can, of course, manifest in an infinite number of things. As such, there exist in the real world infinite varieties of complexities, the specific elucidation of which requires intimate knowledge of the thing with respect to which the specific sort and stripe of complexity at-hand is an emergent property. For purposes of this blog, we will examine the objective conception of complexity in a most general manner. As it is, a thorough understanding of complexity in general is a prerequisite for understanding a particular or specific form of complexity. My personal definition of complexity is that it is the entropy that accompanies an increasing degree of elaboration. The condition of numerous parts, pieces, elements, variables etc. constituting something is a sine qua non for
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Deconstructing the Subjective Conception of Complexity

Questions such as what is complexity and what contributes to the complexity of something are of interest to philosophers in general and to epistemologists in particular. I came across a fascinating array of answers to questions about the nature and function of complexity at a recent meeting of my philosophy discussion group. The subject was approached from several different angles and many of the propositions shared during the collaborative inquiry can be reconciled and synthesized. Also shared were a number of fascinating propositions that despite being germane and, to a lesser or greater degree, meritorious cannot be reconciled with those that were the most relevant to the topic because they were based on sufficiently different premises. Specifically, the irreconcilable propositions concerned themselves primarily with either the relativity, or the subjective perceptions, of complexity.   Again, though I’m not particularly amendable to this position for reasons I will touch upon lat
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An Inadvertent Lesson in Applied Epistemology Through an Exposition of Judicial Procedure

I recently re-watched a fascinating interview of a fascinating lawyer, James Sexton, on Soft White Underbelly’s YouTube channel. Sexton’s knack for telling a story wrapped around a legal matter immediately struck me upon my first viewing some months back. The entire interview is a tour de force and I highly recommend viewing it if something like that tickles your fancy (accessible via this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5z8-9Op2nM&list=LL&t=1155 ). The portion of the interview, the philosophical richness of which I only realized upon a subsequent viewing, where Sexton described judicial procedure to the interviewer made me actively ponder something I intuitively practice but did not hitherto that moment dedicated conscious thought to: the management of costs incurred in shortening one’s inductive leap. In Sexton’s words: “What makes being a… lawyer interesting is that… a lot of what a court has to do is disregard what happened… because the truth is at the bottom of
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An Epistemological Appraisal of Hypotheses and Theories

In common parlance the terms hypothesis and theory are used interchangeably. There is nothing improper about this in everyday usage. However if one is to become philosophically pedantic about such matters, then these terms and their derivatives signify concepts and activities with vastly different epistemic values. Cursory attempts to disambiguate and epistemologically rank these distinct constructs will invariably result in further confusion. The avoidance of such confusion necessitates a thoughtful consideration of the nature of these abstractions and the purpose of their underpinning functions. Consistent with my preferred analytic approach, a semantic inquiry will precede a philosophical one. The Webster’s All-In-One Dictionary & Thesaurus (Second Edition) provides the following definitions for these abstractions: Hypothesis : An assumption made especially in order to test its logical or empirical consequences. Theory : A plausible or scientifically acceptable general p
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Rationalization and Erroneous Reasoning: A Structural Comparison

In the previous blog, by taking a comparative approach, we discussed how reasoning differs from rationalizing. When examining the structural components of reasoning, we, of course, considered cogent reasoning that would likely yield conclusions different from those yielded by rationalizing. Cogent reasoning is reasoning that is based on good reasons; it is based on objective measures such as facts, data, statistics, and evidence. Cogent reasoning is not based on arbitrary, capricious, or whimsical notions such as wishful thinking or rash appeals to emotion. During our immediately preceding comparative study, a natural question that suggested itself was whether rationalizing is the same thing as erroneous, as opposed to cogent, reasoning or, better yet, whether all erroneous reasoning is necessarily rationalizing. As we will explore in this blog, rationalizing and erroneous reasoning are also two altogether different modes of thought, albeit with a distinction much finer than the one
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The Light of Reason versus the Haze of Rationalization

Though in common parlance the words reasoning and rationalization are often used interchangeably, there exist subtle but nonetheless highly important distinctions between them. Merely understanding the distinguishing criteria can enable one to become a better thinker, debater, advocate, and arbiter. To my mind, this is due to at least the following reasons: the correct usage of a word backed by an accurate understanding of its etymological denotation and semantic connotation allows for a level of precision of thought that would not be possible otherwise; he who can delineate the contours of these two separate entities is better equipped to parse one’s interlocutor’s rationalizations from reasoning and then proceed to discredit the rationalizations; and most importantly (and probably a most difficult thing to do), one can identify instances of one’s own rationalizing and attempt to resist the temptation to base one’s beliefs upon rationalizations. The importance of having a technica
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Contextualizing Scientific Method-Based Discoveries in a Syllogistic Framework

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The scientific method, at its core, is the formulation and testing of hypotheses to discern their veracity and accuracy. This description, though comically simple, is sufficient for purposes of this blog. Scientists often attempt to differentiate science from other human endeavors. In my direct personal experience, scientists also resist, oftentimes very fiercely, the idea of science being likened to philosophy in any way. Perhaps this may account for, at least in some small measure, the fact that the logical/epistemological frameworks devised for purposes of advancing scientific discoveries do not resemble (at least not conveniently) the logical/epistemological frameworks utilized by philosophers. While the scientific method’s framework is generally not juxtaposed with the syllogistic framework devised by philosophers for purposes of studying logical reasoning and argumentation, in my opinion even a cursory examination reveals that the scientific method is merely an extension of it. F
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