Re: simulation as a causal/inferential "chimera"

[Steve Johnson <***>]

Tim,

Good point. I did not see that quite this way. And I
think this is indeed different from Hertz's
definition.

I agree with you on this. Still, suppose we
successfully established a congruence between the
relationships among the observables of a plane and the
relationships among images in a software simulation.
We 're successfully encoding/decoding thus the MR
commutes. Clearly, this is possible - it's done all
the time in engineering.

It is true that the simulation software by itself is
not a model but taken *together* with the hardware
this causal/inferential combination must consitute a
model by virtue of satisfying satisfying the MR. Is
this not so?

You might say that the computer CPU (which is the
source of the causal entailments in the chimera) does
not decode into anything in the real plane. Of course,
I agree. But why is their a presumption that every
arbitrarily chosen *part* of the system that serves as
a model has to decode into something in the system
that is being modeled? After all, as you said the
decoding/encoding is between relationships among sets
of observables.

I have a sense that I'm just confusing levels of
description - and I do appreciate your continued
feedback on this.

- Steve





 

--- Tim Gwinn <***> wrote:

> Steve,
> 
> > The *only* meaning of the phrase "bringing
> entailments
> > into congruence" is encoding/decoding of the
> > observables into formal images.
> 
> TG: Entailments are about *relationships* between
> observables, not the
> observables themselves. I would reword your remark
> as: the phrase "bringing
> entailments into congruence" is encoding/decoding of
> the
> _relations_between_observables_ into corresponding
> relations between symbols
> in formal images.
> 
> Regards,
> Tim
> 


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