SUO: RE: Discussion Period on Motion by Matthew West
Dear Jon,
See comments to you.
Matthew West
Principal Consultant
Shell Information Technology International Limited
Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 20 7934 4490 Other Tel: +44 7796 336538
Email: matthew.west@shell.com
Internet: http://www.shell.com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jon Awbrey [mailto:jawbrey@att.net]
> Sent: 03 September 2003 03:59
> To: West, Matthew R SITI-ITPSIE
> Cc: SUO
> Subject: Re: Discussion Period on Motion by Matthew West
>
>
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> JA = Jon Awbrey
> MW = Matthew West
>
>
> JA: So I think I have a way of understanding the statement that
> a state is just a complex property of a system. Some people
> will call that system-thing the "reified system".
>
> MW: It is that which takes on the state.
>
> JA: Yes, the picky point that I think some people are trying
> to make is that the data of experience or the results of
> measurement are what we really have on hand, whereas the
> system-thing is in the bush, as it were, at some remove
> from immediate impressions, the object of possibly many
> competing hypotheses that we form to explain why the
> data are as they are.
>
> MW: I'm not one of them, as you have probably guessed.
> As noted below you can have any individual object
> you want as long as you can demonstrate it has
> a spatio-temporal extent.
>
> Yes, I have no qualms about pretending a hypothesis here and there,
> but the question is whether the specifics of a given hypothesis
> explain the data better than the many competing alternatives.
> This is a stricter test than demonstrating mere consistency
> or the projection of a possible extension in space and time.
>
> Morever, data can vary widely with changes among different bases
> or frames of reference, whereas real objects are associated with
> functions that remain invariant through transformations from one
> frame to another, so it is a non-trivial step to relate the data
> to the object.
MW: You seem to have some idea that there are some "real" objects.
What do you consider these to be?
>
> MW: I have just generated a PDF V1.3 version of the document,
> complete with bookmarks for the TOC. Try that. If it
> still doesn't work I can e-mail it or a Word document.
>
> Even when I save the pdf file to disk, the reader says it is
> corrupted.
> If you could send a Word doc, I could probably read that.
> Thanks, Jon.
>
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