@UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dcm@social.sunet.se @awaisaftab @uh

I think I understand this difficulty. Not easy to describe a constraint... What caused your window to blow in, a specific wind or the entire storm? Any attempt to explain needs to account the big-picture storm, but then the explanation smacks of description.

Solution?.. I think the value of group discussion is that each of you brings diverse experience that can help all to "pan out" via concrete examples.

The Blair article is brilliant, btw.

@UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dcm@social.sunet.se @awaisaftab @uh

Back to the clocks... Any one of the clocks cannot continue to do just what it was doing because the other clocks create conditions (constraints) that keep it from doing so. That is, the other clocks are "canalizing" the behaviour of the clock in question.

@dsmith @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @dcm@social.sunet.se @awaisaftab @uh

or is the resonator (the shelf) the constraint?

or is the fact that you cannot maintain the interfering vibrations the constraint?

and isn't the presence of the resonator also a context?

or is the context the thing that provides the physical manifestation of the constraint?

?????

@UlrikeHahn @dsmith @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @awaisaftab @uh @dsmith @dcm@bookwyrm.social @UlrikeHahn @NicoleCRust @awaisaftab @uh The worry raised by critics of DST in CogSci is that talk of constraints, etc., is at best a shorthand for referring to complex causal relations, and only the latter do the real causal work.

To be clear, I don't endorse that view, at least not in general, as I think that pluralism about forms of explanation is the way to go.

@UlrikeHahn @dsmith @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @awaisaftab @uh However, pluralism does not mean anything goes, and we need to try and figure out which explanations are appropriate for what and for what purposes.

DST explanations may be mere redescriptions in some cases, but may be good explanations in others. They need not exclude mechanistic explanations. On the contrary, they may complement each other, with the latter providing an explanation for why those dynamics arise, etc.

@dcm@social.sunet.se @UlrikeHahn @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @awaisaftab @uh

For the record, I agree with Juerrero -- and like the way you've put it -- that constraints are there in the 'fabric' of the universe. I'd further offer that constraints coordinate to provide (all?) species-typical experience, but would also acknowledge that, like affordances, constraints for one species may not be constraints for a different species.

@dsmith @dcm@social.sunet.se @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @awaisaftab @uh Dylan, I personally don’t have a prior investment into the metaphysical status of constraints (in what way they are real or not) at all, and am totally happy to be convinced either way. My problem at the moment is that I feel like the examples aren’t (yet) clear enough to me one way or the other and the exposition in the book is still too fuzzy for me to really be able to work with….

1/2

@dsmith @dcm@social.sunet.se @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @awaisaftab @uh 2/2 that’s why I feel like being really pedantically specific about some of them might help (me), but then again that might not be useful or not useful for others…

@UlrikeHahn @dcm@social.sunet.se @dcm@bookwyrm.social @NicoleCRust @awaisaftab @uh

Completely agree.