Re: the use of the word predictive

[John Kineman <***>]

Regarding the following exchange:

JM: ...much more than anticipatory. The words are synonymous, unless you
have a glossary setting them apart.
JR: They ARE practically synonymous, John. Why is that a malicious
remark? My
father used both those terms to define one another. My own tendency is to
like "predictive" better, just because "anticipatory" is a pain to say (and
type!).

There is a technical sense in which the two would differ. In the
mechanistic view, a "prediction" ("stating [the future case] before"
[the event]"?) is an exact specification of future states based on prior
ones, which is possible because of the unique character of mechanisms,
that they are fully computable and thus fully predictable. In contrast,
it has become somewhat common in environmental science, for example, to
not talk much about predictions, because we know we can't exactly
predict future states based on present ones. We talk about "forecasting"
("throwing [ideas] ahead," like a fishing fly?) specifically to
distinguish it from explicit mechanistic prediction (and to avoid the
accompanying criticism, which would be severe). Some authors have also
advocated "forecasting by analogy" to suggest that in the absence of
knowing how to develop probabilities, we can get somewhere by comparing
a situation to analogous ones. I would say all these are ways of
anticipating, which could could well capture the idea of a prediction
applied to complex systems, but that only the computable paradigm
produces the classic definition of a prediction. Also, a prediction does
not necessarily imply any action, whereas anticipation seems to ("prior
action that takes into account and forestalls a later action" -
Webster's).  In that strict sense, the biological organism doesn't
predict, it does forecast, and it anticipates.

A concept of the future can certainly be involved, I beleive, without
making it teleological in the ultimate sense banned by science; but then
the point is really to explain teleos, which we observe and experience,
not to avoid it. The damnedable part of telology is actually created BY
the mechanistic paradigm. That view establishes a precise and inviolate
sequence of time and thus the taboo of violating its causality, which is
then banned from thought. Outside that streightjacket, there are many
ways to get teleos, some obvious (like acting from a model) and others
subtle (self-fulfilling prophesies, or models, that alter the future),
and some fundamental (alterations of spacetime, as in the delayed choice
experiments in QM and non-localities). Mechanistic science bans the
reversal possibility that it created!

A further note, you can find many respectable scientific papers these
days about the possibility of time travel. How is that acceptable
parlance when biological teleology isn't? Anybody smell a rat?

JJK