Re: ontological levels

["Tim Gwinn" <***>]

Hi Roberto,

Your explanation to John helped me to better understand your position. I
have a few comments, interspersed below.

On a sidenote, I think that Rosen uses the term "ontology" in a somewhat
different (or restricted) sense than it is normally used in philosophy.
Insofar as he always uses the word in the context of fabrication or
realization of an organism, I believe he is using ontology in the biological
sense of "the study of ontogeny", where "ontogeny" refers to the creation
and development of an organism. So, when he says that in complex systems
'ontology generally varies from epistemology', he is not making any
metaphysical claim; but rather asserting that an analysis of an organism
(its epistemology) will not reveal all of the necessary information for what
is required to fabricate that organism (its ontogeny).

Regards,
Tim

> -----Original Message-----
> From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of Roberto
> Poli
> Sent: Sunday, June 29, 2003 3:10 AM
> To: ***
> Subject:
>
>
> John,
>
> I have appreciated your reactions. Coming from different communities,
> mutual understanding
> usually require adjustments from both sides. Let me add some minor
> remarks only.
>
> > In my views the world (nature? existence?) is "change", a dynamic flow
> > of influences concerning a constantly altered wholeness.
>
> I entirely agree
>
> > You said: I am epistemic, well, epistemology provides in its constant
> > enrichment the current (up-to-date) basis for an "ontology"
>
> I entirely disagree. Seeing ontology as dependent from epistemology is
> possibly the main
> mistake of mainstream philosophy since the times of Kant (and is
> responsible for the poor
> state of contemporary philosophy). Unfortunately, I see no way to
> substantiate my thesis
> in two or three sentences. Let's say that I, for one, claim for the view
> that ontology
> comes first while epistemology (i.e., the cognitive activities developed
> by systems able to
> represent themselves and their environment) comes after.
>
> > Your views are of course definitely reductionistic, not a fault,
> > I hurry to say, but not in the wholistic (Rosenite) line either.
>
> let's wait and see, possibly without adopting dogmatic attitudes. I
> guess we all
> are trying to understand the world and our experience thereof.
>
> > "Levels" of this 'reality' are our fabrications 'how we slice it'.
>
> This is something I tend to reject. Some distinctions are unquestionably
> ours. No doubt.
> But some other are grounded in the hard stuff of the world and we only
> have to properly
> recognize them. Moreover (and more interesting), most distinctions are
> grounded on both
> sides: they require both the world and the mind (they present a kind of
> bilateral dependence
> on both sides).


I would agree with the latter part (requiring both mind and the world). To
me, that describes a modeling relation (MR) between the external world (that
we assume to exist) and associated mental model(s).


> One minor aspect of the problem of levels may help clarifying the point.
> It is useful to
> distinguish between levels of granularity and levels of reality. The
> former depends on our choices:
> we may observe something at any chosen degree of detail, with any chosen
> scale. Interesting enough,
> most phenomena require and impose their own preferred scale(s). We have
> no choice but finding the right
> (spatial and or temporal) scale.


This I tend to disagree with. I am inclined to believe that the only
requirements and preferred scales for dealing with phenomena arise from
within our own mental capacities.What may seem a proper or preferred scale
is largely a subjective criteria: it resides as much in the flexibility of
the mind to build models as it does in the phenomena being observed.

Our choices of circumscribing certain sets of phenomena into systems or
levels have no a priori objective basis. And, the ability for us to create
modeling relations that are congruent with those systems or levels seems to
me to indicate that we *can* divide up the world in that way (to one degree
or another), but that in itself does not provide any persuasive evidence
that such systems or levels are *the way* to divide up reality, regardless
of how proper such divisions might intuitively seem to us. This would not
mean that such levels are not useful or reflective of some properties of the
external world, but they would not have any objective preferential status
over other manners of division of the external world.


In my jargon, "Some levels of
> granularity are levels of reality as well".
> Good. Now a major hypothesis: Levels of reality are sustained by
> causality nets. Select the levels of
> reality with their causality nets and add the laws of connection between
> levels (i.e. forms of dependence and independence, or causality from
> above and from below) and you will approach one of the major structures
> of the world.
> As soon it is recognized that the different levels are sustained by
> different families of causation, variously
> interlaced, reductionism can't surface. As a matter of fact, one of the
> main claims of reductionism is the thesis that there is only one form of
> causation. Therefore, admitting more than one form of causation is one
> way for attaking
> reductionism. I think that this is a perfectly Rosennean claim.

I think this is largely Rosennean, although I would again say that the
causal connections we posit to exist in the external world may be detectable
(or modelable) within and between defined "levels", but that such evidence
does not - in my view - lend support to the notion that those specific
definitions of levels are the proper (the ontological) ones.

>
> cheers, r
> *****************************
> Dr Roberto Poli, PhD
> Editor-in-chief of Axiomathes
> http://www.kluweronline.com/issn/1122-1151
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