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Sure. Any argument for structuralism is countered by non-structuralist/post-structuralist.

by ukj 6y ago

mhh__ 6y ago
That's sounds like philosophy, I'm out!
- ukj 6y ago
  And just one post back you recommended a Philosophical essay ;)
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    It was partly a tongue-in-cheek dogwhistle to the physics crowd, but I do sort of feel that even the essay I cite is useless - interesting, yes. I (and I have tried) really struggle to see what the point is in learning all these philosophy terms when it usually or always ends up being unfalsifiable or a overly proud euphemism for yet another concept. To take a specific example, I'm curious what post-structuralism actually means as applied to the structure I was trying to refer to - there are certain symmetry groups that seem to apply everywhere we look, but the actual structure is itself isn't a symbolic concept in the same way the standard model is.
    - ukj 6y ago
      To me, the value of Philosophy isn't in learning any particular jargon/terminology (any more than learning the jargon of "symmetry groups" is a useful activity) - the value is in the general understanding of the process of how to develop jargon/terminology from first principles. From a physicists' perspective: to develop the language needed to describe/express the physics you are experiencing. There is certainly an element of wheel re-invention in first principles thinking, but acquiring maker's knowledge seems like a more rewarding endeavour than acquiring only user's knowledge. This process of creating new languages/jargon has a name in Computer Science: Meta-linguistic abstraction [1], and so the value of Philosophy (to me) is in the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article: >metalinguistic abstraction is the process of solving complex problems by creating a new language or vocabulary to better understand the problem space. And so this I find it fascinating when you say that... >there are certain symmetry groups that seem to apply everywhere we look Because your meta-language for talking about your experiences is the language of symmetry groups. Post-structuralism (and all Philosophy, really) is merely an attempt to escape the reductionist nature of that sort of language-centric thinking - it's an attempt to drag us out of the cave of Logocentrism [2]. Mathematics is only up to isomorphism - there's nothing in the symbolic denotation without the human connotation, so if structuralism is about symmetry (equalities) , post-structuralism is about asymmetry (inequalities). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalinguistic_abstraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalinguistic_abstraction [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logocentrism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logocentrism

Sure. Any argument for structuralism is countered by non-structuralist/post-structuralist.

by ukj 6y ago

Sure. Any argument for structuralism is countered by non-structuralist/post-structuralist.

mhh__ 6y ago

That's sounds like philosophy, I'm out!

ukj 6y ago
And just one post back you recommended a Philosophical essay ;)
- mhh__ 6y ago
  It was partly a tongue-in-cheek dogwhistle to the physics crowd, but I do sort of feel that even the essay I cite is useless - interesting, yes. I (and I have tried) really struggle to see what the point is in learning all these philosophy terms when it usually or always ends up being unfalsifiable or a overly proud euphemism for yet another concept. To take a specific example, I'm curious what post-structuralism actually means as applied to the structure I was trying to refer to - there are certain symmetry groups that seem to apply everywhere we look, but the actual structure is itself isn't a symbolic concept in the same way the standard model is.
  - ukj 6y ago
    To me, the value of Philosophy isn't in learning any particular jargon/terminology (any more than learning the jargon of "symmetry groups" is a useful activity) - the value is in the general understanding of the process of how to develop jargon/terminology from first principles. From a physicists' perspective: to develop the language needed to describe/express the physics you are experiencing. There is certainly an element of wheel re-invention in first principles thinking, but acquiring maker's knowledge seems like a more rewarding endeavour than acquiring only user's knowledge. This process of creating new languages/jargon has a name in Computer Science: Meta-linguistic abstraction [1], and so the value of Philosophy (to me) is in the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article: >metalinguistic abstraction is the process of solving complex problems by creating a new language or vocabulary to better understand the problem space. And so this I find it fascinating when you say that... >there are certain symmetry groups that seem to apply everywhere we look Because your meta-language for talking about your experiences is the language of symmetry groups. Post-structuralism (and all Philosophy, really) is merely an attempt to escape the reductionist nature of that sort of language-centric thinking - it's an attempt to drag us out of the cave of Logocentrism [2]. Mathematics is only up to isomorphism - there's nothing in the symbolic denotation without the human connotation, so if structuralism is about symmetry (equalities) , post-structuralism is about asymmetry (inequalities). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalinguistic_abstraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalinguistic_abstraction [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logocentrism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logocentrism