#concept formation

[geopolicraticus]

TODAY IN PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY

Heinrich Rickert and the Logical Concept of the Historical   

Saturday 25 May 2024 is the 161st anniversary of the birth of Heinrich Rickert (25 May 1863 – 25 July 1936), who was born in Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland) on this date in 1863.

Rickert built on the work of Windelband, formulating the idea of idiographical sciences in terms of the difference between concept formation in nature science and concept formation in history, which he pursued as a logical inquiry.

Quora:              https://philosophyofhistory.quora.com/ 

Discord:           https://discord.gg/r3dudQvGxD

Links:               https://jnnielsen.carrd.co/

Newsletter:     http://eepurl.com/dMh0_-/

Text post:        https://geopolicraticus.substack.com/p/heinrich-rickert-and-the-logical  

Video:              https://youtu.be/nLzgyLsPWeI   

Podcast:          https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/watkAv5gUJb

[informatikerin-freyja]

I think there is a need for a theory of concept formation which addresses the question of the circumstances under which a novel concept is generated. In terms of a formalism, we can think of a concept formation event as exchanging a \sigma-algebra A for a \sigma-algebra B which contains A. The idea being that the new \sigma-algebra B allows for expressing more propositions on the basis of having another concept in its "vocabulary" with which to express more detailed propositions. The question is then to measure the gain in ability to reason about the environment which a rational agent obtains in moving from A to B. When this accuracy gain is sufficiently high, I postulate that this is a genuine conceptual-genesis event (not sure I like that terminology yet, but it's something at least).

In order to measure the information gain, I propose to consider the problem of writing down heuristic (read defeasible) rules over A or B, and measuring the error rate in these rules. To do this, we model the agent as receiving a stream of possible worlds q_1, q_2, ... to classify in accordance with these heuristic rules. At each time t we measure the error rate of these heuristics as e_A(t) and e_B(t), in terms of the extent to which the relevant heuristic rules accurately describe the worlds in the sequence {q_1, q_2, ..., q_t} or not. When e_B(t) + concept_threshold < e_A(t) then the agent is justified in introducing the new concepts required to move from A to B.

This leaves open the question of efficiently computing the \sigma-algebra B, and also of how to evaluate whether the concept-genesis condition has been satisfied without explicitly computing a candidate \sigma-algebra B.

Anyhow, just some preliminary ideas I'm toying with.

[goldensunset]

when people refer to canon story-relevant kingdom hearts games as ‘spinoffs’ it makes me sad not only for the obvious reasons i always say but also bc like man i WISH this series had spinoffs. imagine what they could do if they had permission from nomura to truly go off the rails and ignore the greater canon for a second and just do some fun whimsical plotless thing in an alternate universe. imagine a fishing/boating game on destiny islands. kh fighting game. it is an injustice that we have been deprived of kingdom karts. can anyone hear me

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

In the shape of you, something new.

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[perrigoaway]

Finished Turnabout Serenade with my sisters today and I had to quickly draw this concept (Also an excuse to draw Apollo AND my girl Ema.. love her.) Also I had to draw them mugshots for this THE KISSY FACE IS NOT SERIOUS just like he's not serious.. he'd so pull the Instagram influencer lips..

Slight spoilers below the cut, just in case!

Can you IMAGINE how freaking funny it'd be if you were Daryan, listening in over the headset, only to hear two people talking about "wanted? Nobody wants him!" about your band mate? Ngl if it was me, I'd end up laughing LMAO which would be bad for him considering.. you know. I really enjoy the worsties dynamic Ema and Klavier have because.. it's just hilarious, honestly. I love how she talks trash about him every waking moment, she is waiting for the SECOND she passes her exam and her 2 weeks notice is ON his desk

Joke made by my sister here @abandonedart

[blorbosinmyheadcentral]

take this silly thing while I struggle with animation

[falmerbrook]

Falmer appearance and attire headcanons

(click on drawings for more details and notes!)

Hair

In Skyrim, we pretty much only see two hair styles to go off of: completely bald and the hair the "shaman" have (which are also the only females we see (a post for another day)).

In concept art, particularly Adam Adamowicz's, we see more potential hairstyles. He draws it as wispy and messy, as well as containing braids and the ties we see in the shaman in the game. This art is largely what defines my own interpretation of their hair.

I picture the typical Falmer hair as wavy, thin, wispy, and looking frizzy. Given the high number of hairless Falmer we see, I imagine baldness is common, particularly among males, and sometimes among females. Their hair can be commonly styled into braids or knots to keep it under control.

The ability to grow long, thick hair is less common, but those who can tend to style it in other unique ways. Especially among females, long hair is commonly styled into large dense locs (akin to a Polish plait) and held into shapes using ropes or leather ties.

(While I think the intention with the way their hair is drawn and modelled in the game models and concept art was that it was braided and held up with those ties, before looking at it closely I always sorta interpreted it as too stiff to just be braided. As a result, I developed the locs headcanon and have become kinda attached to it even though I have 0 in game or lore support for it)

Materials

The material used in their clothing is obviously dependent on what is accessible to them, and given their unique situation that makes the materials they use and value unique as well. In Skyrim, we see that almost all of their armor (which is mostly what we see them wearing) and homes are made of chaurus chitin (and potentially shellbug chitin), so this is likely the most common resource available to them for non-combative coverings as well. Other materials from their arthropods companions could include their cocoons, unhatched eggs, etc.

Bones from other creatures (draugr, skeevers, trolls, adventurers, bandits, etc.) underground or from aboveground raids could also be used fairly often. These could also provide a source of leather or fur, albeit not a lot of it.

Falmer groups and subcultures inside or in close proximity to Dwemer ruins probably make regular use of the materials present in those ruins as well. With all the metal and machinery present in Dwemer ruins, metal probably makes regular appearances in their clothing (and general decorations) even if they can't manipulate it themselves. Falmer more separated from Dwemer ruins would make much lesser use of these materials, however. Additionally, We see implications of Falmer preparing, cooking, and potentially cultivating fungus in-game, but see nothing indicating they have any plants in their diet, and therefore it is unlikely they regularly make or use textiles or fabrics in their clothing, and if they do they likely come form Dwemer ruins or raided adventurers/bandits/settlements from the surface.

On that note, we know that there have supposedly been incidents of Falmer coming to the surface to attack its inhabitants and travelers, as well as instances of them killing bandits, adventurers, and researchers who venture below, so it's not far fetched to believe that they have access to some materials from the surface. This could give them some access to furs from surface animals, beads, glass, jewelry, textiles, metal objects, etc. they might not otherwise have access to. The rarity of these material among the Falmer would depend on the amount of access any given group of Falmer have to the surface, but among many of them these materials could be seen as more valuable for their rarity and the difficulty to gain them.

While gemstones and ore might be accessible from both natural deposits and underground ruins, unless they had some kind of auditory function or unique texture, they might not have much value to Falmer.

General Attire/Accessories

I like to imagine that the Snow Elves, and by extension the Falmer, have an innate cold resistance in the same way Nords do, and therefore don't require clothes for the purpose of warmth even in the chilly caves of Skyrim. Additionally, their blindness likely means that wouldn't dress for visual aesthetic either. My thoughts are that they are then left with the sense of sound and touch to communicate with each other, and their clothing and accessories could reflect that.

Falmer clothing, decoration, and society in general is very heavily based on touch and texture and little on appearances. They touch each other very often for both communication, movement, and just general day-to-day interactions, and their clothes isn’t very modest, but the tactile patterns and materials used can communicate certain things such as position in society, “wealth”/power, whether they are taken, single, pregnant, with a child, etc., their roles, their age, notable achievements/skills, who is who, etc. on both their clothes and buildings. The more noise one makes, the more attention they draw and the more they drown out other noises, and the more noise making things they can “afford” to have, so the amount of noise one makes in a Falmer settlement is a status symbol. Certain types of noises or noise makers are more coveted than others (chitin beads are common, while furs are less common, and materials only gained from raiding the surface are rare and coveted).

Some noise making accessories could include:

Dangling metal, bones, beads, chitin, etc. that hangs off of their clothing or ears and jingle/clank against each other (in my drawing I show them as pretty uniform in shape and size, but they would probably be much more irregular than I depicted them)

Bells (metal or other materials) that are affixed to or dangle off of their clothing or as earrings.

Hollow bracelets, anklets, necklaces, or other accessories that are filled with rocks or beads.

Rattles tied to the body (made of chitin, dried hollow chaurus eggs, dried chaurus cocoons, beads, etc.) with leather or rope.

Flute or whistle like tubes made of metal, chitin, or dried and treated tube-like fungus that makes a woodwind-esque noise when air passes through it in a certain way. They have been designed to make noise easily from even the slightest movements.

Dried grasses (more temporary) tied to the body that make a swishy noise. More permanently, a similar thing can be achieved with hair. The hair can be sourced from Falmer (either through just cutting hair or through taking it from fallen enemies) or killed humans/mer/draugr. That sort of thing can also act as a kind of trophy.

Necklaces with various materials dangling close together that jingle against each other.

Various materials can be tied into braids or the leather ties in their hair as well.

Some textural accessories could include:

Beads. Since they wouldn't have the ability to tell the color of the beads, the patterning of beadwork would be based on the roughness, material, size, or shape of the beads. (I'm sorry I suck as drawing beads)

Furs. This wouldn't be as common since the Falmer likely don't have too much interaction with furry mammals, but some they may have access to that are big enough to make clothing/accessories out of include skeevers or trolls (and potentially rarely animals from the surface). A potential meaning of wearing furs could be as hunting trophies, but it could have other meanings as well.

Chaurus chitin would like be the most common material in Falmer attire, and depending on the part of the chaurus body, the size of the chaurus, or the life stage of the chaurus it was sourced from it could have different textures. Some chitin parts could include large spikes and deep groves, while other parts could be smoother and less rough. The use of this chitin in clothing could take advantage of this contrast in textures. Additionally, chitin or shells from shell bugs might be a different texture from the chaurus chitin. (it's unclear to me whether shell bugs are exclusive to the caves around the Forgotten Vale or if we should consider them distributed throughout Skyrim's underground)

The placement of textured components on the body could have their own meaning to it alongside what accessories or textures are being used.

Specific Falmer Subcultures

While most Falmer settlements we see in Skyrim are just a small-ish collection of huts and chaurus corrals, there are two distinctive settlements that are larger, seemingly more organized, and I like to think have their own distinct subcultures worth mentioning: Blackreach and the Forgotten Vale. The unique scope and environment of these Falmer cities (as I like to think of them) could lend to unique clothing cultures as well.

The Falmer of Blackreach have access to a vast Dwemer settlement and have has the space to spread out throughout it more fully since it seems to be more in tact than other Dwemer ruins we see. These guys would likely have a clothing culture much more heavily based on what the can access from these Dwemer ruins (metal scraps, leftover fabrics, etc.)

The Falmer of the Forgotten Vale would also have access to unique resources, such as Vale deer, Vale sabre cats, and frost giants for fur and leather. Additionally, materials accessed from the Chantry of Auri-El such as textiles from clothing, bedding, tapestries, etc. could give them a greater access to fabrics than other Falmer groups. We don't see many close Dwemer settlements to the Vale, so they would have less Dwemeri influence in their clothing than other Falmer groups.

I like to think that the Falmer's evolution exclusively underground has made them poorly equipped to handle the outdoors during the day and has made them particularly susceptible to sunburn, necessitating the need for covering for those in the Forgotten Vale who have significant settlements outdoors. With greater access to textiles and leather, they could use them as coverings when outdoors.

Armor

I actually have very few notes on armor, for two reasons. 1) I hate designing and drawing armor. It is the bane of my existence. 2) I really like the armor they have in game! I think they look awesome aesthetically, and I like how clearly they are made from chaurus chitin. Per usual, Adam Adamowicz's designs seem to have been the major inspiration for the Falmer armor, and he did a great jobs (even if it isn't the most functional looking armor ever).

(off topic but I also just want to add that he draws them with little hairs and tufts on their ears and I love it. ok that is all)

I do have a few thoughts about armor though.

Even attire made of textiles make noise when someone moves in them, and I can imagine moving around in armor, especially armor made of hard, insect shells would make a lot of noise when someone moves around in it. When you're relying on sound to navigate your environment and pinpoint potential threats or targets, wearing something making a lot of noise would not be ideal. On the other hand, getting into a fight unarmored would be a problem.

So here's my solution: heavy armor (see below) would only be worm within the camps/settlements where noise was already high and space is more cramped (and therefore more risky in a fight) as a sort of guard in case they were attacked. Those guarding the settlements along the outside might still wear armor as well, but less of it. Those going out to scout or hunt (if they do hunt) would wear as little armor as possible, and try to wear it strategically so that it wouldn't rub against itself and make noise. This is why most Falmer we encounter in the game are wearing little except for loin cloths and kneepads.

One more idea I have for armor is a specific armor piece. On the note of guarding or protecting a camp or settlement, I imagine the noises of it all (especially with the noise based headcanons I've laid out here) would make it hard to actually catch any potential threats when you can't see. A large slightly concave piece of armor worn behind the head could block out noises from behind the wearer, as well as a help focus sounds ahead of them.

That is all! Thank you for reading! A lot of these concepts around the culture of sound I think could also be applied to their buildings and even a culture of music, but those are posts for another time.

All of the concept art I used was taken from here and all of the Skyrim screenshots are from UESP.

[ash-rigby]

Naga boyfriend with aphrodisiac venom going down on you and biting your thigh between every orgasm he works out of you so each time you're more and more sensitive; moaning, throbbing uncontrollably, unable to stop cumming for that greedy mouth of his.

[fairytaleprincessart]

[upsidedog]

i was gonna do this meme with the original format then a much better came to mind

[bacchuschucklefuck]

and! barbarian!fig! its her

[geopolicraticus]

Frontiers - Spring 2023

Many years ago I retrieved a book from a free book bin. It was Carl Hempel’s Fundamentals of Concept Formation in Empirical Science. I was intrigued by the idea of concept formation, and the book has turned out to be an ongoing influence on my thought to the present day. Hempel’s monograph was squarely within the tradition of Anglo-American analytical philosophy, featured as Vol. II, No. 7 in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science (IEUS), an ambitious but unfinished positivist project, closely associated with the Vienna Circle and logical empiricism.

I have since acquired several other monographs from the IEUS. In Vol. II, No. 1, Foundations of the Social Sciences by Otto Neurath, I found an anticipation of big history in which Neurath imagines, “all sciences as dovetailed to such a degree that we may regard them as parts of one science which deals with stars, Milky Ways, earth, plants, animals, human beings, forests, natural regions, tribes, and nations—in short, a comprehensive cosmic history.” (p. 9) However, the unity of science imagined by Neurath was reductive rather than emergent, being based upon the conceptual framework of early twentieth century positivism. There is a collection of papers, Otto Neurath and the Unity of Science, edited by Symons, Pombo, and Torres, focusing on just this difference between reductive and emergent conceptions of unified science.

Another monograph in the IEUS, Vol. II, No. 5, The Technique of Theory Construction by Joseph H. Woodger (who, in another work, The Axiomatic Method in Biology, has given a spectacularly reductive account of biology), includes this interesting aside: “The mere ordering of statements does not of itself create new information.” (p. 77)

While this is true, it ignores the fact that the ordering of information has a significant bearing upon emphasis and obviousness. The reductive unification of the sciences orders knowledge hierarchically, emphasizing the fundamental nature of physics in a material universe. An emergentist unification of science also orders knowledge hierarchically, but with the emphasis on the implicit possibilities that flower into later complexity. Both are true; each is complementary to the other; and each puts knowledge in a decidedly different light.

The logical empiricists, largely neglected today, are to be admired for the consistency and thoroughness with which they set about the reorganization of knowledge built from the bottom up by an explicit program of concept formation that built a common conceptual framework for the enterprise. Big history also seeks a thorough-going reorganization of knowledge on emergentist lines. Pulling back from the detail both of traditional history and of reductivist theories of knowledge, big history is a re-ordering of knowledge that places the facts of the world in light of the bigger picture—perhaps this is not new information, but it is a new perspective on information.

Big history would do well to study the history of concept formation, the better to understand the process of concept formation, and to pursue its own systematic effort at big history concept formation no less ambitious than that of the logical empiricists. There is much material upon which to draw. Years after I found Hempel’s monograph, I got a copy of Heinrich Rickert’s The Limits of Concept Formation in Natural Science: A Logical Introduction to the Historical Sciences. This work also systematically approaches concept formation, but Rickert belonged to those philosophers who thought that history requires a method distinct from that of the natural sciences, so his work is complementary to that of Hempel.

Once I started actively seeking out works on concept formation I also found Alfred Schutz’s 1954 paper “Concept and Theory Formation in the Social Sciences.” Schutz had attended a seminar held by Nagel and Hempel, and, impressed by their methods, sought to extend the analysis of concept formation to the social sciences, and within a phenomenological framework. Again, this places knowledge in another light, and constitutes another complementary effort from which big history can learn. 

[howlerbat]

[bruisedloverr]

Sexually repressed angel with a very high libido who has done chastity vows 🤝 Demon with an equally high libido who knows what the angel truly wants and it's up to help him unleash all his perverted desires

[rylxdreams]

I still can't get the unused concept art of Wish out of my head so I've been reading a lot of rewrites and looking at a lot of Wish redesigns...

So... I got inspired. I'm currently conceptualizing my own Wish "rewrite/redesigns", but with a twist. It's gonna be a spiritual "prequel", cuz idk I feel like being meta since we'll be using the original concepts before the final concepts/decisions made for the final movie XD

Many of my "prequel" characters will be stand-ins for the canon characters! So "Asha" will be renamed "Amala", "Magnifico" will be called "Mamoun", and so on. Think of Pokemon Legends: Arceus regarding the relations of these "OCs" with the canon characters.

Anyway, here are the designs I have so far! I only have the designs for Amala and the Star for now. Hopefully, I can get to draw the other characters soon, especially Mamoun and his wife.

The story will be called "Once Upon a Wish"

Here's an overview of what I have so far... Some details may change if I feel like my other choices serve the story better. (Also, small disclaimer, this is just a veryyy self-indulgent AU made by yours truly, so some details may not be accurate with the canon lore present in Wish)

The story takes place on the same island of Rosas, but from many years ago. If my research is right, canon Wish takes place in the 1200s, so maybe my "prequel" can take place in around the 900s-1000s. Rosas definitely wasn't called Rosas back then, but I'm still figuring out what to call it so I'm just gonna refer to it as "an island".

Amala is a shy, meek, but hardworking apprentice of the island's head sorcerer Mamoun (hence, her color palette looks similar to Mickey's outfit from The Sorcerer's Apprentice). Despite all her hard work in her magic studies, she doesn't really excel at using magic, making a lot of accidents during training. If there's anything she really excels at, it's the act of storytelling (She can draw/animate, sing, and write stories like fairy tales).

Amala also has a little sister Ayah, who I can imagine is the Lilo/Anna to Amala's Nani/Elsa. Ayah is spunky and cheerful, but she has an illness that makes her disabled. The sisters are orphans, but they live under an old family friend they affectionately call Grandpa Dabir. Dabir is a retired bard turned doctor who was part of a troupe with 6 other former bards, all of whom he and the sisters still interact.

That's all I can share for now. Feel free to ask me any questions about stuff about this AU!

[feelo-fick]

miscellaneous au doodles + a VERY self indulgent song lyric comic :D

+ extra evil comic below the cut :

"chil!" "don't look at me like that..."