Re: ontological levels

["Roberto Poli" <***>]

Tim,
see below a couple of short comments.

(skip)
> My concern is that any system under study, such as a "bacterium" or a
> certain "social phenomenon", are subjectively defined.

Let us consider the bacterium case (the question of "social phenomenon"
is much more intricate)
I cannot imagine that you really believe that the bacterium's
dimensions, structure and properties
are "subjectively defined". They are not a product of our phantasy,
imagination, or whatever.
They are there, in themselves, and we only try to capture as many as
possible of their properties.

> In Rosennean terms, a
> system is a certain collections of observables along with the apparent
> linkage relations between those observables. There are
> certainly scales that
> are appropriate and useful for studying such systems once
> they have been
> defined by us, but I am not sure how the identification of
> those scales
> suggests that those particular defined systems have any preferred
> ontological status over some other choice of system (i.e., a different
> defined collection of observables plus relations).

The fact that we can build up different models of some system does not
imply
that the underlying system (the observed one) is conventional or
subjective!
Let me stress this point. As you know, Rosen distinguished sharply
between
simple systems (systems with a maximal model or systems that can be
completely
known) and complex systems (systems without a maximal model or systems
that can't
be completely known). Even if I have no textual evidence at hand, I am
totally sure
that he never considered complex systems as less objective (or more
subjective) than
simple ones (Judith, this is your turn :-) ).  Otherwise, there would
have been no
need for spending all those energies in providing so detailed formal and
methodological
analyses.